


Facilis Descensus Averno

by ghoulical (MysAlexa)



Series: Averno [1]
Category: Creepypasta - Fandom, Everyman HYBRID, Marble Hornets, SCP Foundation, Tribe Twelve
Genre: Alternate Universe, As of Summer 2017, Canonical Character Death, Creepypastas and Slenderverse in the same universe, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Homicide detective and undercover SCP agent, More characters to be added, Multiple Crossovers, Mystery, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Slenderverse, The Operator and the Administrator are the same, i don't know what to write anymore, send help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12091293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MysAlexa/pseuds/ghoulical
Summary: "The descent to Hell is easy."----------A peculiar mass homicide case takes a twisted turn when renowned Detective Abigail Bishop is partnered with FBI Agent Joel Gilliam to uncover the truth behind the murders, only to discover there are terrible secrets and demons far more terrifying than she can ever imagine hiding in the shadows of the world they live in, and soon finds herself stuck in an endless loop where death is certainly not an escape.----------Inconsistent update schedule. New chapters will be written when I feel like it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate universe in which the Slenderverse series co-exist with popular creepypasta and SCP universes.  
> Disclaimer: Abigail Bishop, Joel Gilliam and Skylar Martin belong to me--all others belong to their respective owners/creators.

Norman Cousins once said, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

And before everything that had happened, I never realized how true his words had been.

My name is Abigail Bishop. I’ve been a police officer in my local police department for almost a decade now, having spent the last three of them as a homicide detective. The unfortunate part about it, however, was that nothing much ever happened in this little town I’ve been living in my entire life—a little depressing considering the fact that this has been my dream job since I was a little kid, when all my other classmates dreamt of becoming doctors, engineers and hot-shot CEOs once they inherited their parents’ well-established companies.

Seeing how I would often come to work just to organize old case files, records and reports all day, I dread the day my former schoolmates would arrange a reunion event just to brag about how successful they were, or how interesting all their lives were, compared to me.

But on one fateful day, as I was waiting in line at a nearby coffee shop to get quick pick-me-ups for some of my fellow officers back at the station, my phone started to buzz from inside my pocket, and I almost quite literally dropped my shit when I saw the name that popped up on the brightened LED screen.

And I’ve never ran away from the alluring, bittersweet call of coffee so fast in my entire life, for the sake of the new case I’d just been assigned to.

I arrived at the crime scene within ten minutes. It was located in the downtown neighborhood area, almost to the outskirts of town, where endless rows of trees bordered the town from the outside world beyond the borders. All the houses here looked almost similar to one another, but the yellow police lines taped all over the property made it clear which one was my current destination.

What disturbed me, however, was the fact that rather than just one house, there were two houses taped with police lines.

I decided I’d question it later when I’m more informed about the case, and what in the world happened in this quaint little neighborhood.

The forensics team was already there before I arrived, taking pictures and bagging up any evidence they could find within the property. I greeted the ones I recognized and was told that the medical examiner in-charge, Dr. Vivian Bailey, was upstairs examining the bodies. I thanked them for the tip and headed straight through the open door and into the two-floor building.

I found her upstairs, in one of the smaller bedrooms which I assumed to be the family’s child’s bedroom. She, too, was taking photographs of the murder victim, but, having the ears of a hawk’s, she noticed me entering the room almost immediately as she looked up and gave me a look.

“About time you got here,” she said. Dr. Bailey, too, was a great friend of mine, and though she had a rather stoic, no-nonsense personality, I could tell that she, too, was excited to be doing something for once in this boring old town.

“I got yelled at several times on my way here earlier, so cut me some slack, will you?” I joked a little, until I turned to my side and saw the body, and noticed how young the victim had been. “Oh my. This one met an unfortunate fate, didn’t he?”

“Mm-hmm. His name was Jordan Smith, sixteen. Cause of death was major blood loss from two incision wounds found in his upper abdomen.” With her gloved hands, she pulled up his shirt and pointed the wounds for me. His entire abdomen was stained with blood, while the cuts themselves were both at opposite angles, but what intrigued me was the fact that the wounds had been stitched up, though very poorly to the point that the skin around the cuts were swelling.

“Now, note the fact that I said they were incision wounds.” She pointed at one of the cuts. “The killer sliced the victim’s skin open, with a sharp object. Perhaps a small knife, or an x-acto knife or even a scalpel, but I don’t think the forensics team has found anything of the sort within the property.”

“Great.” I sighed.

"Oh, but that's not all," she said, with an amused smile. "There's more."

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Instead of answering directly, she beckoned me to follow her out the room. I complied, and we walked further down the hallway, to where the master bedroom should be. The door was slightly ajar but I could smell the stench of stale, dried blood even all the way from the hallway, and I doubted from how overwhelming it was that it came from just the teenager earlier.

And sure enough, my doubts were not wrong.

The master bedroom was a mess. There was shattered glass all over the brown carpet floor, coming from the smashed lightbulb still attached to a lamp stand found right next to the king-sized bed, with its lampshade located halfway across the room. In the center of the chaos was a man, lying down on his side on the floor amidst the shattered glass, a dark pool of blood growing beneath him and staining the carpet even further. On top of the bed, beneath the strewn bed cover was what I assumed to be the man’s wife, lying cold but peaceful compared to the state the rest of the room was in.

“The boy’s parents?” I questioned, shoulders dropping.

Dr. Bailey nodded. “Yep. John Smith, and the missus is Marilyn Smith, both in their early forties. Cause of death is the same as their son; blood loss from incision wounds, stitched, found in the upper abdominal area.”

“So the killer went and killed the entire family.” I crossed my arms and shook my head. “Talk about a mass homicide case.”

“Oh, honey, we haven’t even started yet.” She nodded to one side of the wall, which I realized to be next door, at the other house which was taped off. “If you think this one is disturbing enough, you haven’t seen the other ones.”

I blinked. “There’s _more?_ ”

I couldn’t believe my own ears then. I’d wanted a job since the past month—though I suppose it was a good thing that nothing was happening because that meant that the streets were still free of known murderers who had recent killings—but this was nothing like what I’d been expecting.

And she wasn’t kidding when she said that there was more. Oh, there was just so much more, and this case might be the one to bring about nightmares when I sleep at night.

The house itself was not much different from the one we were just in, with the exception of more traditionalist furniture and the presence of multiple children’s toys lying around, which only brought about a more depressing note to this one than the last, from what I could assume from the toys.

And then we reached the master bedroom, and compared to this one, the last crime scene was relatively _clean_ , because never in my life have I ever seen so much _blood_ , all in one room alone.

Crimson-red droplets splattered on the walls and on the floor, along with a trail of blood smeared on one side of the wall leading down to the dead body slumped over on the floor, his chest decorated with multiple stab wounds that indicated that this one didn’t last long—at least, not long enough to put up some struggle like the first house. Another body was found on the bed, this one female, but unlike the last one, she was lying down perpendicular to the bed, her chest and abdomen also decorated with stab wounds and covered in blood.

What shocked me the most, however, was the message the killer had left for us, written in crimson-red liquid that I could only assume was the victims’ blood.

‘GO TO SLEEP.’

I’ve read about psychopaths and sociopaths, especially those that ended up being serial killers, some of which were some of the nation’s worst. But I don’t think that any of them was as gruesome and horrible as this one was.

“I know, right?”

I turned to Dr. Bailey, who had her arms crossed and her eyes staring at the bloody message as well, a sarcastic smirk on her face.

“It’s almost poetic,” she said. “But what concerns me most, and I think it should concern you as well, is the fact that this was nothing like the last one. The victims are Samuel and Diana Walker, along with toddler twins Lisa and Marie. Parents in their early thirties and the kids are both three years old.”

I held my hand over my heart—what sort of twisted monster could do something like this, I thought. Murdering two families, including their children, in cold blood… No person—no _human_ —could do this. I was sure of it from the very beginning.

“Cause of death?” I didn’t even need to ask, really, but I did for confirmation.

“Multiple stab wounds,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Chest and abdominal area. Struck the heart, lungs and pretty much any major organ, artery and vein there is. It’s going to be a mess to try and perform autopsy on these poor souls. God, who—no, _what_ —could _do_ something like this?”

“Not the same one who did the other one, I think.” I crouched down and examined the body the best I could while keeping a distance and my balance, not wanting to fall face-first onto the bloodstained carpet. “When did each of the murders occur?”

“Time of death for the Walkers was approximately at 12.09 AM last night, and for the Smiths, it was about five minutes right after.”

“Five minutes.” I chewed on my lip. “I don’t think that’s enough time to get out of the other house and straight into this one. Not to mention the drastic change in M.O.; nobody can commit such a brutal murder like this and be calm and collected in committing the other one.” I glanced over my shoulder and stared at her. “I think we’re dealing with two different murders this time around.”

“Okay, hold on just a sec; are you implying that the two murders that occurred last night just so happened to have happened at almost the exact same time, just five minutes apart? Like this is all some coincidence.”

I wasn’t implying it was a _complete_ coincidence, though. I was never a believer of coincidences, but rather, that there was a reason behind everything. Behind every phenomenon in this entire world, throughout history. That there was no such thing as a mere ‘coincidence.’

“Maybe they had an agreement,” I suggested, but it wasn’t a strong argument, to the point that I was aware of that fact myself. I just didn’t know how else to explain this ‘coincidence.’ “Maybe there is some connection with the Smiths and Walkers, along with the ones who were behind the murders. Vendetta could be a motive. You never know what people are hiding from you from beneath the surface.”

“Very cryptic.” She placed her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Are you suggesting something there, Bishop? Because please, don’t hold back any information—or any juicy gossip from me, all right? For example, if you’ve finally found yourself a man to spend the rest of your life with.”

“When pigs fly,” I sneered. “But don’t worry—you’ll be the first to know.”

She laughed, but when her sight fell on the crime scene again, she was brought back to the harshness of reality, as was I. “Well, that ‘coincidence’ is something that you will need to look into; my job is to cut open dead bodies and see what they have to say—the details of their cruel fate—and report back to you with such details. I think I’ll work on the Smiths first—find out what the hell was the killer doing, trying to stitch back the cuts _they_ made. Also, to spare my stomach from throwing up that hella delicious pastry I had for breakfast this morning.”

I watched as she, along with a member of the forensics team, bagged the bodies to take them back to the morgue and later the autopsy room, where she could get to work in her field of expertise, all the while examining as much as I could of the crime scene, deep in thought.

There was no murder weapon found in either of the houses, much to my dismay. We did, however, notice that one of the kitchen knives in the Walker household was missing from the knife block downstairs—whether it was missing long before the incident or it had been used as a murder weapon was yet to be determined, because we found absolutely no prints on either of the crime scenes, aside from the victims’ own ones. But from the looks of it, the killer—or _killers_ —had used different weapons, because from what Dr. Bailey described and later confirmed before she left was that the weapon used to stab the Walkers left rather large stab wounds, and a knife like that couldn’t be used to make such delicate cuts on the Smiths unless it was under an extremely trained hand.

Still, there was not much we could do at the scene. There was not much of a lead we had, period. My assumption that it was two culprits was still contradictory and had no proof whatsoever, until I received results from both the forensics team and the medical examining office from Dr. Bailey.

Until then, I went back to the station empty-handed and with a heavy heart, but once I got back there, I didn’t realize I was going to receive yet another surprise about the case—and not one I was particularly pleased with, either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bishop meets Gilliam for the first time, and discovers unsettling truths about the possible culprits of her most recent case.

I was on my way to my desk when I was forced to stop dead in my tracks when Captain McCormick called me into his office.

I placed the coffee carrier on my desk—I did the liberty of getting coffee still, despite having left the queue earlier this morning in favor of the case—before making my way to the captain’s private office. The door was slightly ajar, allowing me to hear voices from inside; both were male, one of which I recognized to be the captain’s, while the other rang no bells in mind.

And that was what worried me most.

They must’ve heard my footsteps approaching from outside the door, because Captain McCormick called me inside not long after I stopped in front of the door. Taking a deep breath, I pushed it open and found myself face-to-face with an unfamiliar, middle-aged man in a proper, formal suit, with a rugged appearance that screamed ‘government agent’ more than ‘successful businessman.’

And I assumed right.

“Agent Gilliam, this is Detective Bishop,” the captain said, addressing the unknown man before turning to me. “The detective-in-charge for our most recent case, and the best one we’ve ever had in the station yet. And Detective Bishop, meet Special Agent Joel Gilliam, FBI.”

I was skeptical at the time. I glared at the man, eyed him up and down. He seemed like the stereotypical government agent, indeed, with the boring old black tie and everything. Short brown hair with a receding hairline, eyes a dull shade of blue with bags under them, and a rough, unkempt stubble that gave off the aura of a typical drunkard on top of everything—you know, the man who spends his nights in one corner of the bar, drinking like there was no tomorrow, contemplating their purpose in life.

The only strange thing about him that might or might not be worth noting, however, was the badge-like item pinned to the pocket of his inner shirt. It was rude to stare so I merely glanced over it, but I was positive it wasn’t the logo of the FBI or anything I’ve ever seen.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked, ignoring the man as I questioned the captain about his mere presence there. “What does the FBI have anything to do with the case? Or this station at all?”

“Well.” The captain looked back and forth between the agent and myself. I knew it was nothing good. “Due to the circumstances of the recent homicide case you are in charge of, I’m afraid that you will have to continue investigations with Agent Gilliam over here—he will be your partner for the duration of the case, as a liaison.”

“ _What?_ ”

I had to stay it. I just had to say, ‘as if today can get any worse.’

“According to the evidence you’ve recovered from the crime scene,” the captain explained, sweat rolling down his forehead—the poor man probably thought I was going to strangle him or something, which was understandable, “Agent Gilliam suggested that he might know who the true culprit behind the murder is, because according to him, this is not the first time something like this has happened.”

“ _What?_ ”

“ _Culprits_ , actually.”

I froze in place, and turned to the FBI agent, this time glaring with intimidation.

“Come on, Detective,” he smirked. “I’ve heard you’ve been in the job for years now; surely such a suggestion has crossed your mind prior to this, correct? Two different modus operandis, at such a small difference in timeframe… it will be quite impossible if you seek to prove both murders were done by the same person.”

“Well, it could be possible. Perhaps due to dissociative personality disorder?”

“Unlikely.” I was starting to harbor some resent towards the agent at this point around, but kept as much of a professional behavior as I could. “Besides, just from how they killed, and how they left the scenes of the crime as the states they are in now, I can already confirm who are behind this.”

“Please.” I was resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “Enlighten me.”

Instead of replying immediately, he handed me two plain manila folders, both containing a hefty amount of files inside each. I wasn’t prepared to accept the burden and grunted at the weight, which only further added to his amusement and my annoyance.

“The first crime scene is another handiwork of an insane maniac who calls himself Jeff the Killer.”

As he spoke, I flipped open the first manila folder, and much to my own shock, there was quite the peculiar photograph at the front page. It was a face of a person—or what used to be a person—with paper-white skin, wide, bloodshot eyes, long black hair and the most terrifying, red-lipped smile I’ve ever seen in my entire life—and it was something, considering how I could never bring myself to visit the circus because of such smiles, but none of them were as spine-chilling and nightmare-inducing as this one.

“His name was Jeffrey Woods.” As I flipped the image over, the next page was a printed document—a record of the person with the same name he’d just mentioned. There was another picture at the corner of the page, but this time, the person looked far more civil than the one in the first picture. It was of a regular teenage boy, with rather long, shoulder-length dark brown hair and dark eyes, last recorded being just thirteen years old before going missing. “A troubled child with a violent streak. After being a victim of bullying shortly after he moved to a new neighborhood, not too far from here, he retaliated and attempted to murder the same kids a few days after, though he met quite the grisly fate.

“All we knew was that the house was set on fire and the boy was caught up in it, and ended up having at least second-degree burns that kept him in the hospital for several weeks. Unfortunately, according to medical records, it was stated that the incident caused his face and hair to be charred, causing him to look almost deformed. The day after he came home from the hospital, he killed his entire family and was never to be seen or heard from again.”

Chills ran down my spine. How could a thirteen-year-old be capable of such a horrible thing, I asked myself. I was well-aware of some of the most twisted serial killers in history, but none seemed as twisted as this boy.

But, over time, I was proved wrong. There were more wicked forces, hiding beneath the shadows—and this was just the tip of the iceberg.

“His intentions are just to satisfy his lust for the thrill of the hunt,” Gilliam continued. “Nothing more. He kills, and that’s it. He doesn’t differentiate between the innocent and guilty, he doesn’t pick his victims—he just needs to kill. But his M.O. is always the same—he sneaks into people’s homes, stabs his victims repeatedly with the same knife, then paints the same message on the wall with his victim’s blood.”

 _Go to sleep,_ I thought, recalling the bloody message. I shuddered in fear just from the thought of it.

“His victims almost never survive, except for one who managed to escape unscathed, and gave us quite the description of him. According to the witness, the insane boy had no eyelids, the corners of his eyes singed with black—almost as if he’d burned them off. Another thing that was sure to have burned into the witness’ memory for the rest of their life is the fact that the boy carved his mouth, with what I can assume is using his own knife, and made it into an eternal smile.”

I swallowed hard. The boy was insane, for sure. Perhaps possessed, if anything.

“What about the other one?” I questioned, but even then, I already had a feeling that I didn’t want to find out.

“I was just getting to that,” Gilliam said with a taunting smile. I wished I could slap it off his face, but chose to ignore it as I flipped to the second folder. The picture right behind the cover was not anymore settling than the first one, but rather than terrifying, it was just… creepy. It was a printed picture of what seemed to be the corner ceiling of a room, with a person’s face looking down from above and straight to the camera—no, it wasn’t exactly a person, but rather a strange figure dressed in black, and I couldn’t tell if it was the blue hue of the picture or not, but his face seemed blue, with two black bottomless pits where his eyes should’ve been and a faint outline of a nose.

“A boy named Jack Nichols, who now goes by the name of Eyeless Jack.”

 _Gee,_ I thought, staring at the bottomless pits once more. _I wonder why_.

The second picture on this boy’s civilian record, once again, looked far more normal. The picture was of a young man, possibly in his late teens, with short, disheveled auburn hair, fair skin and deep blue eyes, almost the same shade as the face of the figure in the first photo. His last recorded age was twenty, and last recorded location was at a college, named West Point College, which was also not too far from here, where he was pursuing a degree in medicine.

“His first tragedy involved a massacre as well, which happened about four years ago,” Gilliam continued. “About ten students were found dead in the forest not too far from West Point College, particularly inside a cave where we believed to be the site of a cultish group, considering the markings on the walls, the evidence scattered around and the black robes the students were wearing at the time. Gruesomely enough, the students had been mutilated—their eyes were gouged out, throats were ripped open, guts exposed and clawed out, as well as one particular organ missing from all of them.”

He paused, keeping his mouth on a firm line. “Their kidneys.”

I raised an eyebrow and did a double take. “Come again?”

“Wait, I will get back to that later,” he said and took a deep breath. “There was only one survivor from the massacre—Jennifer Smith, found left bleeding to death in the same cave she confessed to have lured the boy into, to have him act as a sacrifice to whatever sort of demon the cult was worshipping, dubbed Chernobog. Jack unwittingly became the ‘son of Chernobog’—or so she said in her witness account—and in the process of his transformation to said sacrifice, they scooped out his eyeballs and poured sacrificial fluid into the empty sockets. However, instead of ‘releasing them into everlasting paradise’ as they’d thought the demon would—”

“He killed them,” I finished for him. It was that obvious, but regardless, it was still a rather grim ending. “I’m guessing the ritual didn’t work?”

“Oh, it did.” This piqued my curiosity. “He doesn’t have eyes, yet he can still see. And for some reason, he starts eating kidneys to sustain himself, which is disturbing on its own.”

“Wait.” I paused, gave it some thought, and let it sink in. “Are you saying he _eats_ the kidneys?”

Much to my dismay at the time, he nodded. “He has resorted to cannibalism. I have no idea why, but we have evidence; we managed to find one of his many hideouts, busted in and found a fridge full of his victim’s kidneys. They weren’t named, but they were placed in mason jars, suspended in preserving fluids, some of which have bites taken out of them.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I placed one hand on my hip and the other on my forehead. I was near to catching a fever at that point. Then I turned to the captain. “Please, sir, tell me this is some kind of a joke.”

“I’m afraid not, Detective,” the captain said in just as grim of a tone. “Agent Gilliam here is experienced in handling cases as absurd as these. He has been after these two killers since the beginning of his career—many cases remain unsolved, many crimes have gone unpunished because these two are still on the lose.”

“Even if their activities seemed to have ceased about a year ago.” I turned back to Gilliam and frowned at his words. “But it seems that they have resurfaced once more. Can’t stay in the shadows for too long, after all.”

“Then why are they still on the loose again?” I questioned. “You claim to know everything about these two. Who they were, what they’ve done, how they act and how they kill. How come they’re not behind bars, or better yet, receiving death sentences for the crimes they’ve committed? Or are you just that bad at your job?”

The FBI agent took this comment to heart. He glared at me, narrowed his eyes at me as if he was patronizing me in my own field of expertise for many years now.

“Because they are not human,” he said. “They kill, they disappear right after, and they reappear the next day several states apart from where their latest victims were. Their behaviors are unpredictable, despite their same respective killing patterns. We have absolutely no idea where in the world they will appear next. Not to mention the fact that they have collaborated in more than just one instance.”

“What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath and a long pause, as if thinking his words over. It seemed like something he didn’t want to tell me, but he had to—I was, after all, in charge of this case. And I was, in fact, once offered a job at the FBI, but I had other responsibilities to take care of—responsibilities I couldn’t tend to if I’d became a federal agent. I might have more experience in this than Gilliam himself, hence why I wasn’t taken off the case in the first place.

“These two are not just the ones out there,” he finally said, after some hesitation. “There are many of them—countless numbers of them. I am not supposed to reveal any of this to you, but I trust that this conversation is kept private between us, yes, Captain?”

Turning to the captain, he nodded.

“And since there is nothing I can do to take you off the case,” he continued, “I will tell you as much as you are allowed to know; there are others like these two. Some appear human, others are not, but none of them are considered ‘normal.’ There is the girl who used to be one of Jeff’s victims who also went insane and now goes by the name Jane the Killer; there’s the teenager who started a murder spree, killing his own classmates, who called himself Bloody Painter; there’s the demon-playing-vigilante named KageKao. There are countless others, and we have records of them, yet we have no idea where they can be right now, hence why they are still roaming free as the scourge of the Earth as we speak. And it is not uncommon to see one or two of them working together on certain instances, which makes things more complicated than they are now.”

“So, let me get this straight.” I cleared my throat. “Are you telling me this is a case that is impossible to solve? Are you trying to intimidate me here—is that what you’re doing?”

“That would be the last thing I have in mind,” he said, shaking his head. “I intend to close this case, as with all the others still piled up in my desk. Again, as I’ve said before, they all disappeared about a year ago. I don’t know what happened to them, but it seems that two has resurfaced once more. Two is still manageable, I suppose—and we better put a stop to it before the others hear the news and become active again.”

“And you’re just agreeing with all of this?” I glanced back and forth between the government agent and my own boss in disbelief—and disappointment. “With all due respect, sir, you believe this man’s words to be true? Let me see a badge first here, then we’ll talk, because for all I know, he can be some nutjob in a suit claiming to be FBI.”

“You mean this badge?”

And indeed, Gilliam took out something from inside his suit jacket, then flipped it open to reveal a gleaming, golden badge, and upon closer inspection, it seemed like a legitimate badge assigned from the Federal Bureau of Investigations indeed. Although other officers in the station might have wide eyes of admiration towards anybody in the law enforcement department with higher importance than they were because of how pathetic we all felt ourselves to be, all I could do was stare at him with contempt.

“I assure you, ma’am, my intentions are true,” he said, putting his badge away. “And I’m sure you wish to put those scum behind bars just as much as I do, seeing how you got involved in this most recent case of theirs before I am. And I can use a helping hand… if you’re up for the task, that is.”

“If I’m up for the task?” I hated being mocked for my job. Having encountered far too many people during the course of this job who underestimated me for my abilities, only to be proven wrong when I do put them behind bars, I did not take kindly to his doubts for me.

I folded my arms in front of me and glared at him, all the while putting on the friendliest fake smile I could muster. “Fine. You’re on. But cross me just one time and I will hang you myself.”

He showed no emotions still, even as he nodded at my threat. “Noted.”

I didn’t like this whole partnership thing from the very beginning, but I didn’t have a choice. This man—whoever he claimed to be—apparently knew more about the apparent culprits of the murders than I did. And even then, I already knew that this case wasn’t going to rest easy.

It wasn’t going to be easy at all.

“So.” I cracked my head to the side. “Where do we begin, then?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following a hopeful lead obtained from the crime scene, Bishop travels far and wide to track down the suspects, but gets more than what she expected.

Despite the odds, we did get a lead on the supposed culprits of the crime, much to Gilliam’s surprise; one of the killers left their weapon on the scene of the crime, something that Gilliam noted ‘never happened before, because they’re not rookies.’

Just as Dr. Bailey mentioned before, the weapon responsible for ending the Smiths’ lives was a small knife, likely a scalpel. About a block away from the crime scene was a fast food joint, and when the local trash collector was taking out the trash in their dumpsters, one of them found a used scalpel just resting amongst a pile of empty boxes and cans. It was wiped clean and no fingerprints were found, but simple luminol testing came up positive.

Regardless, the lead came from the fact that the scalpel had a serial number on it, meaning it was licensed to a hospital. Though it took a while, we managed to track down the weapon’s origin to be a local hospital still within the state, about a town over from where the crime occurred.

Of course, we paid the hospital a little visit, and questioned them about any suspicious activity in recent weeks or months. It turned out our lead came up with a success.

“Actually, come to think of it, there was this incident that happened not too long ago,” the head nurse replied when we questioned her, and Gilliam and I exchanged glances.

“What kind of incident, may I ask?” I questioned.

“A theft,” she said. “Surgical instruments. There was a shipment of new ones coming here about a month ago, and all of a sudden, a bunch went missing and were never recovered.”

I raised an eyebrow and frowned. “How come the theft was never reported?”

The head nurse hung her head and sighed. “Well, it was just one box. We thought maybe the manufacturer miscounted, and since they haven’t contacted us back, we just let it slide.”

“Uh huh.” I nodded, and narrowed my eyes at the stout woman. “And who were the ones responsible for managing shipment of supplies?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Ah, I have to check. Would you mind waiting for just a moment, officer?”

The head nurse disappeared off somewhere to check the computer. Meanwhile, Gilliam tapped my back and I turned around to face him, quickly noticing the skeptical look across his face.

“This is too good to be true,” he said in a hushed tone, leaning over to me as though he was afraid someone might overhear us. “Throughout my entire career in investigating crimes like these, never before have I ever obtained a lead like this.”

“Maybe I’m just lucky,” I teased, shrugging, but he wasn’t convinced.

“The whole thing seems too sloppy,” he then said. “I told you, none of them ever leave their weapons behind just like that. This is just too... easy. Saying I have a bad feeling about this is too much of an understatement.”

“You said it’s been two years since any of them have been active, right?” I pointed out, and he nodded. “Maybe they were a little rusty. Two years _is_ a long time, you know.”

“And they have more than just two years of experience, Detective Bishop,” Gilliam replied with a deadpan tone. “I doubt they ever ‘get rusty’ in something they are quite the experts at.”

The nurse came back quick enough, with a certain look on her face that told me I was going to receive some quite unpleasant news.

“It was an intern,” she said. “Her name is Skylar Andersen.”

“And where is Ms. Martin right now?” I asked, and her frown deepened.

“She… quit,” she said after some hesitation. “About a month ago. A few days after the shipment disappeared, actually.”

I turned to look at Gilliam. “Looks like we’ve got a lead we can follow.”

He was perplexed. “I’ve never heard of any of these bastards having an accomplice. This is… quite out of the ordinary indeed.”

“Maybe a copycat killer?” I suggested. “It is an option. You did say they never leave their weapons behind—maybe the person we’re dealing with now isn’t any one of them at all.”

“Perhaps.” I could tell he was considering that possibility, and for a moment, it looked like he was convinced. He turned to the head nurse and asked, with a louder voice, “Ma’am, do you have records of this Skylar Andersen? It appears we need to pay her a little visit.”

* * *

A hellstorm went down right after, because for a second there, it seemed like our lead had finally reached its dead end.

Following the address the head nurse gave us from the hospital’s records, apparently this Skylar Andersen gave them a false address, because it led us to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere that burned down years ago. There wasn’t even a single trace of life in there, so maybe Gilliam was right about this lead being one that was far too good to be true.

So we went back to the precinct almost empty-handed; we ran a search for Skylar Andersen by name and face, from the photo the head nurse graciously provided us with. It took an entire day just to search through the database, but what came up was a bit surprising indeed.

It turned out that there was no Skylar Andersen living in this same area, but rather, the supposed person’s facial features matched that of a teenager who went missing just a couple of towns over—five years ago. A girl by the name of Skylar Martin.

Apparently, the girl had quite the tragic past. Records stated that she was orphaned at a young age after her parents were killed in a robbery attack, after which the police found her starving to death inside a wardrobe where she hid from the attackers. She moved ever since to her grandfather’s house, the only immediate family she had left, but even that peace didn’t last long. About five years ago, a string of tragic occurrences followed one after the other; an accident involving the death of a teenage girl about her age in the local area where she lived, then not long after was murder and attempted arson in that same neighborhood she lived in, which apparently involved one of her closest friends at the time. Within a week since it happened, like the boy who committed the murder and started the fire, she disappeared, and the rest was history.

A Missing Persons case was indeed filed, but it wasn’t long before the grandfather died as well, and almost everyone else left in that neighborhood seemed as if they’d forgotten about these kids—these tragedies. Like they never happened at all, because it looked like nobody else was searching for her other than her grandfather. I suppose it wasn’t too hard for her, then, to make up a whole new identity for her to live by and try to make a living with, apparent from her temporary employment at the hospital.

So our lead went cold for some time, while Gilliam pulled a few strings to ask people back at his office for some help in searching through footage from surveillance camera in the local streets to try and find this near-non-existent girl. He even left to head back to his office for a couple of days while he’s at it, though he was still saying something about how this lead was starting to steer us towards the wrong direction because everything seemed so wrong in the first place—that the lead wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place.

But I thought again, if what he said was true—of how we were facing against inhuman serial killers who have escaped the clutches of authority for years before vanishing from the surface of the Earth just like that—then any lead would be good enough. Even if this wasn’t them, even if this was the work of some copycat killer trying to make a name of himself, a murder was committed regardless, and the culprit must be caught.

Although, some decisive evidence was discovered from lab results after testing the traces of blood found on some of the furniture in the Walkers’ home, and the strange drops of some black fluid found in the Smiths’ residence. The blood in the Walkers’ did belong to a Jeffrey Woods, while the black substance, though containing several unidentified components with its gooey, ink-like texture, also had plasma and cells in it, like normal blood would—it belonged to Jack Nichols, so I guess Gilliam wasn’t lying to me after all.

When Gilliam finally came back to invade my territory once more, the dark look across his face wasn’t so obvious anymore, so I assumed he had good news to tell me.

“Your little lead got us somewhere, I suppose,” he murmured, handing me a manila folder whilst sipping on his mug of coffee, his eyes not even glancing at me. This man had issues from the start.

“Tone down the salt there, Mr. Suit,” I joked, still in a rather jovial mood until I flipped the folder open and scanned its contents. Then I pause.

“This place is a three-hour drive from here,” I stated, glancing up from the papers to glare at him, who in turn paid no attention to me. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he said with another sip of the mug. “There was a purchase for a secondhand pick-up truck signed under her name. It’s paid in cash, but we managed to track down the license plate and it was last seen in this address’ location.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

“Fitting for a runaway teenager, isn’t it?” he mused, his eyes glancing at me for just a moment. “It’s still nine o’clock; we best be going if we don’t want to get back here late, now don’t we?”

* * *

Despite my offer to drive, he insisted—claiming he wanted to be a gentleman, which only pissed me off even more than he already had. Though, not that I even want to be behind the wheel for more than a couple of hours.

We got there a little before noon with light traffic for once in a while. It didn’t matter much in the end anyway, because the address was about a mile away from city borders, almost nearing to the surrounding forest area in the distance, so I wasn’t kidding when I said that it was literally in the middle of nowhere.

The address led us to an old farmhouse, but it wasn’t abandoned—in fact, it looked quite well-kept aside from aging factors such as a few broken wooden planks on the deck of the porch and dry vines hanging from the roof. The paint was little chipped and worn away because of the weather, and there was a broken rusted wind vane on the top of the roof, right next to a brick chimney. Beside the farmhouse was an old barn, its doors locked up and chained.

The truck was nowhere to be found.

We parked our car on the side of the curb and hopped out. I squinted at the glaring sun high up in the sky shining down upon us, before turning to the side to see Gilliam approaching the front of the barn where a dirt path trailed from the barn doors to the main road, his eyes looking at the ground. I didn’t need him to point it out for me to realize what he was looking at.

“Tire marks.” Traces of black rubber printed on the dirt path, almost covered by a few strands of hay.

“They look fresh,” he said, taking a few steps towards it. “Looks like someone wanted to get out of this place in a hurry.”

“Someone might still be inside,” I said however, nodding at the house. When silence fell, it was when I heard it; sounds, like voices, coming from inside the main building. I couldn’t make them out for sure since they sounded quite muffled, but they didn’t sound like normal human voices, likely from a television or radio, I thought.

He seemed to acknowledge my statement, as he gave a little bow and motioned towards the house. “After you, then.”

I rolled my eyes. “Such a gentleman.”

We approached the house with caution, making sure to not make a sound while also taking in our surroundings. The air seemed fresh and didn’t smell like animal feces like I’d thought it would be, so it was unlikely that anybody kept actual farm animals here. To our left was the forest, about the same distance between the house and the city. Having heard terrible stories of people who ventured to those woods, I don’t think anybody in their right mind would want to live in a place like this, out in the literal middle of nowhere, but the house was indeed inhabited by someone, judging by the sounds coming from within the house alone.

The wood creaked under our weight as we climbed up the porch to the front door. The sounds were more obvious this time around, and I could confirm it was from a TV, loud enough that whoever was inside was still oblivious to our presence here. The two of us exchanged glances for a moment before he gave me a short nod as a clear sign to proceed, so I raised a fist and knocked on the wooden door.

“Police,” I called out, hoping my voice was going to be louder than the television’s. “Open up. We need to ask you a few questions.”

We heard a loud crash, then a loud curse. “Hold on, I’ll be right there in a sec!”

A female voice replied to us. Gilliam seemed a little displeased by this, but I ignored him—if this girl was responsible for the theft at the hospital, which incidentally led to a bunch of surgical instruments, which included scalpels, going missing, this might tie in to the case, seeing how one of them was used as the murder weapon that ended the Smiths’ lives.

I hoped we could tie this with the Walkers’ deaths as well, but that was for later. This was what we had to deal with for the moment.

“She could even be an accomplice,” I suggested, but Gilliam shook his head.

“It’s a miracle the two killers haven’t even killed each other, much less have an accomplice,” he snorted. Despite his words, I noticed his hand reaching for his waist where his belt was, his fingers just inches away from grabbing his weapon.

After about a minute, then a few clicks from the door, it opened just a bit, revealing, indeed, a young woman half-standing behind the door. Just like in the picture of her civilian record, she was in her late teens, with grey eyes and dark brown hair that had been cut neck-length since the day the picture on the record was taken, wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt with a stained white tank top underneath, torn light blue jeans and brown ankle boots.

Her eyes went wide as soon as they fell upon us, before moving to lean against the door with a scoff and an unamused look across her face. “Oh, you guys weren’t kidding.”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am,” I said. “Skylar Andersen?”

She nodded, “I prefer if people call me Skye, but sure, yeah.”

I continued, “I’m Detective Bishop, and this is Special Agent Gilliam of the FBI. We have a few questions to ask you, if you don’t mind.”

“Depends,” she said with a frown. “What’s this about?”

“A theft,” Gilliam answered for me, heading straight to the point. “At Rosewood Hospital. I believe you have had employment experience there—in fact, you might have even heard about it.”

The girl went stiff, her eyes wide and glaring. “I… Yes, I have,” she said with some hesitation. Then, after a pause as she began to chew on her lip, she added, “And I know what you people are probably thinking, but I wasn’t the one who did it.”

“And yet you were the one responsible for handling the shipment at the time, yes?”

“To inventory it, yes,” she explained. “But I wasn’t the one who stole it. You can ask the head nurse—I inputted the numbers, the exact same one as the manufacturer shipped, then all of a sudden, the day right after, about a dozen of them were gone.”

I exchanged glances at Gilliam. He, too, wasn’t convinced.

“May we come in?”

The living area was quite homey compared to the house’s exterior. The floor and walls were still decent, old couches that were a little torn in some parts arranged perpendicularly, and a small CRT TV was still running, though the volume was muted down a bit until she went over to snatch the remote to turn it off after closing the door behind us.

“Make yourselves at home,” she said before heading off to the back to the kitchen area. “Sorry if this place isn’t up to standards; haven’t had any guests for a while now so I never bothered to clean up much. Coffee or tea?”

“Some tea would be nice,” I said, sitting down on the couch then turned to Gilliam, who shook his head and remained standing.

“I’m good,” he said, then turned away to stare at the unknown distance. It was starting to grind my gears, but I suppose I should get used to it sooner or later.

As she was busy preparing the tea, I decided to take the time to question her even further.

“Can you tell me more about that day?” I asked, and she complied without doubt.

“It was a bad day,” she said. “I got there a little earlier than usual, hoping to get some work done before visiting hours began, but my keycard wouldn’t work so I couldn’t get in through the back entrance until another member of the staff came in to help me out. Then I redid inventory just in case, and it turned out one of the boxes were missing. Then the head nurse called me, saying she wanted to talk to me, and I asked what’s wrong, and she questioned me about why I was here in the middle of the night even when my shift ended.”

“And let me guess,” I mused. “It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Of course not!” She came back to the living area with a cup of tea for me, which I thanked her for, before she sat down on the couch perpendicular to the one I was sitting on. “You know how far away this place is. My shift ended at six, and the entry log said my keycard was used at one in the following morning—the day I found out one of the boxes was missing, along with my keycard. Why would I be there at one in the morning when I can be here, in my bed and wrapped in a blanket, fast asleep so I can head back there by eight and wouldn’t be late for work?”

“Speaking of work, you quit your job at the hospital within the same week the shipment went missing,” I pointed out, and she went stiff again. “Why was that?”

“Fuel,” she said. “The pay I got at the time wasn’t going to cover my transport costs anymore, let alone for food and other necessities, so I had to quit and find a job somewhere closer to home. I work at the convenience store down the road, right before this whole countryside scenery starts—you can ask my manager there, he’ll confirm it.”

She sighed, then added, “I swear to god, it wasn’t me who stole those supplies. I lost my keycard that night, I don’t know how, but—"

“Ms. Andersen.” Both our heads turned to Gilliam, who spoke up all of a sudden, his eyes now studying the few framed pictures hanging by the side wall. I didn’t fail to notice the girl going tense upon seeing this as well. “When we questioned the nurse the other day, she gave us what was supposed to be your address, and yet it led us to an abandoned house. Why was that, may I ask?”

It took a moment before the girl answered again. “I borrowed some money,” she explained, “from some bad people, all right? It’s been, like, a year or so and I haven’t gathered enough money to pay them back. They got angry and tried to find me, so I gave my employers a fake address so in case any of those men tracked me down to working in any of those places, they won’t find me. Which leads me to wondering how the hell _you guys_ can find me in the first place.”

“We have our resources,” Gilliam answered in a stoic voice. “What’s the money for?”

“Nothing you need to know about.” There was some hostility in the girl’s voice now—I could tell she was getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute, and even I had no idea what the hell Gilliam was going at through this. “But nothing illegal, I assure you.”

“Uh huh.” I didn’t like the tone of his voice. “Say, Ms. Andersen, do you live out here alone, by yourself? Because though you haven’t mentioned anybody living here with you, the truck out there that you bought a while ago is missing and these pictures state otherwise.”

Curious, I stood up and decided to take a look at it, and he wasn’t wrong.

It was like a family photo, with four people in it, sitting on a couch that looked exactly like the one I was just sitting on. Skye was in the middle right, and interestingly enough, she was the only girl in the picture, as she was surrounded by three men, all of various ages, bearing somewhat familiar faces.

To her left was a man who was at least in his late twenties or early thirties, with short brown hair combed to the side along with sideburns. Beside the man was a younger man, perhaps a little younger than Skye, with medium-length brown hair, wild and unkempt, with almost a death-like pallor for skin and a curious scar running from the left corner of his lips all the way to his cheek, and a hint of what I’d call ‘puberty stubble.’ To Skye’s left in the picture was a face that was no doubt familiar—a young man a little older than Skye, with auburn hair and a complexion that was a little paler and somewhat _greyer_ than the picture on his criminal record.

It was him. It was Eyeless Jack.

But at the same time, if what Gilliam told me was true, then it was as if the boy hadn’t changed at all. Then again, it must’ve been taken maybe a year ago, since the furniture seemed a bit less worn out than it was now, but it was certainly not as far back as five years ago, because they all looked older than in the photos in their respective civilian records.

The photograph next to it, however, was a different story. It was taken even further back than the one I’d just been looking it, but the atmosphere was a lot more different. There were just three of them there—Jack, the boy and Skye, and the older man in the first picture was nowhere to be seen. But that wasn't it—the two boys were standing at either sides of her, and the girl herself was on a wheelchair, in a typical hospital gown, her form slumped over the chair with her eyes wide open, staring up to the ceiling.

I couldn't help but ask to myself, what the hell happened in this picture? It seemed like it was a rather recent picture, perhaps a year old. Something even more to question about was the identity of the other people in those pictures—was that really the so-called kidney-eating serial killer we were looking for this whole time? And who were the other two, and where were they?

“I think it's time that the two of you leave.”

Startled, I turned around to look at the girl in question, who was already standing up with her arms crossed in front of her.

“I don’t think so,” Gilliam said, then tapped at the wooden frame of the first picture we looked at. “It’s funny, how you haven’t mentioned about anybody else living here up until now. Although, I can’t blame you—not when you’re trying to protect three known murderers right here in this house alone.”

My breath caught stuck in my throat and I froze. _Three? What the fuck—_

“Gilliam?” I started, but he ignored me.

“Where are they?” he demanded, but the girl remain frozen where she stood, glaring back at him with a dangerous glint in her eyes. “Where are they, Skylar Martin?”

Upon being called by her real name, her eyes went wide for a split second before she narrowed them back at him again, her hands on her sides curling into fists.

“Leave,” she spat out with just as much hostility. “Now.”

Alarmed, my hand reached over to my weapon by my waist, watching her carefully as I noticed one of her fingers twitching in the clenched fist.

“Skye,” I began with a much calmer voice than Gilliam’s, but I was also cautious as I extended one hand out. “Don’t. Please.”

“ _Where are they?_ ”

“I don’t know!”

A loud crash was heard upstairs, startling us all. But it wasn’t until Skye’s expression morphed into one of pure horror that Gilliam took notice of it and immediately headed for the stairs, and I, out of instinct, followed suit.

“ _No!_ ”

I heard the girl shouting at us from where we left her, but we rushed upstairs as fast as we could to the source of the sound. There was a small hallway with a few doors, one of which that was closest to the stairs wide open. Gilliam was standing in the doorway, his gun raised and pointed at something inside the room.

“Hands where I can see them!” he yelled, as I rushed over to where he was, pulled out my gun and peeked over his shoulder.

It was one of the people in the picture—the youngest one, with pale complexion and the scar on his cheek, wearing a grey hoodie with striped sleeves, yellow-tinted steampunk goggles perched on the top of his head and a scarf-like object dangling from his neck. He raised his hands above his head, his bloodshot eyes wide in shock, the boy twitching every now and then like he was about to have a seizure anytime soon.

I heard the footsteps running up the stairs behind me so I turned around and pointed my gun at Skye, and she stopped, then raised her hands as well.

She looked like she was about to cry.

As we brought the two teenagers out the house with their hands handcuffed behind their backs, I could distinctly remember what the girl said to the boy, in between her sobs of despair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I almost felt sorry for her. Eventually I did, after I heard the truth behind the story she’s been trying to hide all this time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye is hiding much more than what she's willing to tell, but that doesn't deter Bishop from getting to the truth, even if it'll kill her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance; canon character death here. Fight me, but we all know it was gonna happen one way or another anyway.

“Three killers? Did I hear you right earlier? _Three_ killers?”

We got back to the precinct in the afternoon and brought the two teenagers into separate interrogation rooms each, while keeping them handcuffed and under police custody still. Neither of them said anything since we apprehended them back at the farmhouse, with the exception of Skye’s quiet sobs in the back of the car and her friend saying how it wasn’t her fault and trying to calm her down. It seemed like they were acting more like siblings than young lovers, though.

I felt bad for them in the end anyway. They looked innocent enough, which confused me even more when thinking back to Gilliam confronting them back at the farmhouse. It looked like he had everything solved while leaving me completely in the dark, because even by the time we made it back to the office, I still had no idea what in the world was happening, other than the fact that Gilliam arrested them for what I assumed was murder.

But for what murder, I still had no idea which.

“She’s a smart girl, though,” Gilliam remarked as he stared into the empty room where Skye was being detained in. The girl looked depressed but her crying had ceased, leaving her an empty shell of the person I just met a few hours ago. “Crazy for doing what she did, and perhaps a little foolish, but she’s smart if she made it this far. Unless, of course, she’s a murderer herself.”

I shook my head. “Okay, hold on there, pause. Now you’re just accusing everyone of being a killer. What—are you going to accuse me of being one, too?”

He was silent for a moment, before saying, “You have no idea, do you, Detective? Why don’t you go on ahead and have the girl confirm it herself? She’ll tell you everything—if she knows what’s good for her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I couldn’t believe that man—I refused to believe that man—but I have always been a woman of curiosity.

So I entered the room with the straightest face I could pull and sat down in front of her.

I glanced over my shoulder, at Gilliam, who remained standing by the door, then turned to the girl.

She refused to look at me.

“Skye, please,” I began, keeping my voice gentle as to not disturb her, but she didn’t move the slightest bit. “Tell us the truth—the _whole_ truth.”

“Why should I?” Her voice was small, and I felt my empathetic heart reach out to the poor girl.

“Skye, you do know that if you are trying to cover for a confirmed suspect of a homicide, you will be charged for being an accomplice.” I paused, closed my eyes and held myself back. From personal experience, threats wouldn’t work for young ones like her—it would only make matters worse. “If you tell me everything, I promise we’ll work something out to ease your sentence—and your friend’s sentence, too.”

Behind me, Gilliam scoffed, and I resisted the urge to snap at him for being such an asshole this time around. But it appeared that I wasn’t the only one.

Skye lifted her head and turned to glare at my partner.

“You know everything, don’t you?” Her voice was still soft but there was some force in it—the same anger evident in her voice back at the farmhouse. “Why ask me? Why can’t you tell her yourself? Even if I say anything, I doubt you’ll trust me. It’s always like that with the feds, anyway.”

She slumped back down upon her seat and went silent again. I turned my gaze back at him with a questioning look, but he ignored it.

“As the detective said,” he stated, “if you admit to everything, we’ll consider lessening your sentence. Defending three known criminals isn’t going to give you a light punishment, you know.”

“They’re not criminals!” She shot herself out of the chair, her handcuffs rattling and the chair groaning as it was shoved back, but she stood there frozen for a moment, staring at us before she slumped back to her seat again. “None of them did anything wrong. What they’ve done, what they did—they had no choice, okay?”

“Perhaps,” Gilliam replied, but there was no mercy in his voice. “All except one. Jack kills because he wants to, yes?”

There was a short pause, then, “N-No—he didn’t want to. He never wanted to. It was that demon inside of him that made him do it—made him a monster. But he never wanted to kill.”

“Then why steal the kidneys?”

I had a feeling I wasn’t in charge of this interrogation anymore.

Skye looked like she was about to dry heave for a moment before she calmed herself down. “Again, it’s the demon. Jack himself has always been careful this whole time—the time when he still killed, anyway.” There was a pause before she added, “How is this even about him in the first place, anyway? And Toby, too? You were asking me about the theft at the hospital—and none of us were responsible for it. We’ve established that.”

I took a deep breath. “One of the scalpels in the surgical instruments stolen that night was found to be a murder weapon in a recent murder case we’re working on at the moment. And from what we’ve discovered, we have reason to believe that Jack Nichols is behind the murder, along with an accomplice of his, Jeffrey Woods.”

Her eyes went wide as saucers as soon as she heard me said it. “What? No, no, no—that’s impossible. He couldn’t have done it—neither of them did.”

“Oh, so you admit it now, Ms. Martin?” Gilliam spoke behind me, then I heard footsteps approaching our direction and he appeared beside me but remained standing. “You do admit that you do know of their criminal history?”

“Isn’t that much obvious by now?” she snapped at him, but turned back to me with a softer expression. “I know it’s not them. Neither of them have killed for over a year now—well, I don’t know about Jeff, but I know Jack didn’t kill them. He’s been with us for the past year.”

“That doesn’t guarantee anything,” Gilliam said. “If it is true what you said about the demon, then perhaps he couldn’t hold himself back for long. A year is a long time, you know.”

Her hostility returned once more as she addressed him. “We’ve been keeping the demon at bay by having him eat animal kidneys and raw meat instead, and up until now, he’s been improving. He doesn’t kill anymore.”

“But that still doesn’t change the fact that he has killed many innocent civilians before. Just like that little boyfriend of yours next door, and the other one, too.”

“Toby’s like a brother to me!” She straightened her back again, just like a threatened cat, but at least her reaction wasn’t so violent anymore. “You know what happened to him—to us. You know about the fire, don’t you?”

“And the fact that he murdered his own father? Of course.” And that was when I finally realized what Gilliam was talking about. Skye finally found him, I guess. “Then he tried to light the neighborhood on fire—the same neighborhood you lived in—then he disappeared. Not too long after, so did you.”

She looked away once he mentioned this—she might be thinking about her grandfather, which only made the situation even sadder than before.

“You don’t know the whole story,” she murmured. “His father was abusive to him—he was abusive to the whole damn family, dammit. A straight up bastard—he deserved to die, if anything. And when Lyra died…”

Her voice trailed off to nothingness. She must be talking about the girl who died in the car accident not too long before the murder occurred, who I read was, indeed, the sister of Toby Rogers, whom I figured was the Toby she had been referring to this whole time—the boy detained next door.

“When he killed Mr. Rogers, he wasn’t himself either,” Skye continued, regaining the strength in her voice. “He—I-I can’t tell you, but he wasn’t himself. Someone was controlling him—convincing him to resort to murder because he couldn’t handle it anyway. The bastard acted as if Lyra’s death was nothing at all—the death of his own daughter, for God’s sake! And Toby and Lyra… They were close. Toby’s always had issues at school because of his Tourette’s, so he ended up being homeschooled. He had no other friends but Lyra—her death took a huge toll on him, too.”

The way she described about both the siblings… It was clear that Skye had formed close bonds with both of them, judging by the hint of sorrow in her voice whenever she described her late friend.

“But the boy did murder the man,” Gilliam stated, his voice lacking any emotion or pity. “And attempted to burn the rest of the neighborhood down as well—including you.”

“I know.” She was twitching uncomfortably now. Nearly being burned alive would put that much trauma to a girl like her, so I couldn’t blame her. “But he was scared. He told me himself, that he did it because he knew the police were going to catch him, so he tried to get rid of the evidence by burning it all. He didn’t intend for the whole place to burn down—he just wanted to get rid of the evidence.”

“But a criminal regardless,” he scoffed. “And what about the other one? I assume you have an explanation for his actions, too?”

She went silent again, this time longer than before. “I don’t have to give you one—it was in self-defense. That much is obvious. After all, it’s all over the internet.”

My frown grew upon hearing this, so I looked to my partner in hopes of being provided with some information. He caught my gaze for a brief moment, sighed, then turned back to the girl.

“Unless,” Skye added, “You haven’t watched the whole thing at all.”

“I have.”

 _I haven’t_ , I thought to myself. I was going to ask Gilliam about this once we were done there.

“So why are you still labelling him as a criminal?” She then narrowed her eyes at him. “Unless, of course, you know more about it then you’re letting on, Agent Gilliam. Am I right?”

I looked at him again, a little perplexed by her words. I was usually always doubtful of the person on the other side of the table, in situations like this, but I knew Gilliam just as much as I knew about the girl, which gave me just as much rights to be suspicious of him as I was of her.

And when I came to think of it, he did seem to know more about these things than he’s letting on. It could be experience from his own line of work, but he acted so abnormally calm dealing with situations like these, how absurd they might be. If I was in his shoes, I would still be a little disturbed by all of this—even after my own work experience, some of the people I put behind bars had motives and killing methods that surprised me even more each time, and what I’ve found out about the people involved in this case alone wasn’t going to be something easy to forget like a forbidden love story that went awry and ended with murder.

This was something far, far deeper than that.

“ _Special_ Agent Gilliam,” he snapped, but the volume of his voice didn’t fluctuate at all, and there was still no obvious emotion evident in his speech. “Speaking of which, you don’t happen to know where the other two are, do you?”

Another long period of silence. “I’m not going to tell you where Jack is,” she said with the same sense of hostility. “I don’t care how much you threaten me, but I’m not going to tell you.”

“And Timothy Wright?”

She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to tell us, but I knew Gilliam wasn’t going to back down. I sure wish he did.

“He…” She looked down. “He’s dead. He’s been that way for a while now." She paused, then, "But none of us did it, if that's what you think. He was like... a big brother to us. We'd never forgive ourselves if we did."

It didn’t take the genius to hear the pain in her voice as she said this. And I knew exactly how she felt—well, maybe it was far worse in her part, since she’s lost everything at this point, having done research on her past and all that. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be in her position right now.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” was all I could say, but she shook her head.

“It’s okay,” she muttered indistinctly. “It was inevitable anyway.”

“Very well.” Gilliam took a step back, and the slight disdain I held for him grew even more the moment I noticed he still held no emotion towards the poor girl. “We’ve gone off-track from the case at hand, but we will discuss about your involvement as an accomplice at another time. Bishop?”

I let out a long sigh. I supposed we were done with the weird and back to the normal.

I was going to open the case folder for her but paused halfway and thought twice about what I was going to show her.

“Are you...” I began, “okay with, you know… sensitive material?”

She gave me a tired look, but she wasn’t annoyed with me as much as she was with Gilliam. “As your partner has said, I’ve lived with three people who were known to have murdered at least one person, and one of them used to be a cannibal who ate kidneys for sustenance.”

I stood corrected.

I laid out a few photographs of the victims’ bodies to her, a couple taken at the crime scene and others after autopsy, as well as photos of the victims pre-mortem.

As she had said, she glanced over them without showing any disturbance at all, as if seeing the insides of a dead human body was a common sight for her to see.

“These are the bodies of the people recovered from the scene of the crime,” I said, watching as her eyes continued to scan through the photos. “These are the ones done by Jeff the Killer, and these are the ones your friend killed.”

“ _Allegedly_ killed,” she corrected, then went silent again as she continued to study them. “Well, it’s useless to show me the victims’ faces because even if it’s the two of them who did this, they usually pick them out on random, though Jack likes to steer clear away from the children and the elderly.” She paused, then nodded at the photograph of the Smiths. “How did they die again?”

“They bled out.”

She gave me an absentminded nod as she narrowed her eyes at one of the photographs. “Yeah, no wonder,” she said, her voice becoming somewhat distant and entranced at the same time. With her hands cuffed, she nodded at the picture. “The cuts are too messy, and the stitching is awful, too. Before the demon ruined his life, he used to be a medical student—he was in his third year when it happened. And you know of his criminal record—he’s too cautious to be this reckless.”

It disturbed me a little, how an innocent-looking girl like her would know this much about a serial killer’s motive. Then again, she did live with him for at least a year, I suppose.

She just took a quick scan over the bodies of the Walkers, though. “And as for Jeff’s handiwork… Well, I can’t say it’s difficult to replicate that, but I am quite certain about these ones—the ones you said Jack had killed.”

She leaned back, satisfied that she’s done her work. “He didn’t kill them,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

Gilliam looked far from pleased. “And _who_ do you propose did it?”

She gave us a feeble shrug. “How the hell would I know? Whoever it was stole my keycard back then and tried to frame me for it, too—tried to frame both of us for it. I mean, I know how Jack works but that doesn’t mean I can do it myself. I can’t even slap a mosquito on my own arm, for God’s sake.”

Gilliam just opened his mouth to retort back, but I cut him off before he could even say anything to make matters worse than it already was.

“Do you have any idea who would do such a thing?” I asked. “Anybody at all?”

She gave it some thought. “I mean, it could be anyone who knew I worked at that hospital back then. Maybe a coworker? I mean, I wasn’t the only one who was there at the time the boxes came. Anybody could’ve been there and stole my keycard, or maybe I dropped it somewhere.”

“Great,” Gilliam scoffed, crossing his arms. “This is going nowhere real fast. She could be lying to us for all we know. Otherwise, she’s not going to be of much use for this case other than hostage to lure the damn bastard out—if that thing even has any semblance of family left. It’s our only option left, after all.”

Skye deflated. I couldn’t believe my own ears.

“You’re not going to use her as a human hostage,” I stated with the firmest voice I could muster, standing up to meet him eye-to-eye.

“You don’t understand, Detective,” he retorted back, shaking his head. “I have been after that—that _creature—_ for _years_ now. He has been responsible for countless innocents’ deaths, not to mention the fact that he is _possessed_ by a _demon._ That sort of menace alone should not be allowed to roam around freely out in the open like this.”

“And I understand that, Agent.” I crossed my arms in front of me. I wasn’t afraid of him. “But in our line of work—and you should be aware of this more than I do, given your position—we do not risk endangering another innocent citizen just to do the greater good. What we do is find the decisive evidence we need, track down the real bastard who did this and put them behind bars, _without_ having to force someone to plead to the person who might not even be responsible for this case alone, against her own will.”

“And how are you so sure if the girl is as innocent as she seems?”

His words struck a nerve in me. I found myself doubting again; I glanced over to where the girl was, silent as a mouse as ever, her head turned away but there was no way she couldn’t be hearing our conversation when even the whole precinct could hear us at this point.

“She could be working with that damned creature, for all we know.” I turned back to Gilliam. He was leaning towards me, speaking in a low voice that sounded almost threatening, but ultimately warning. “She tried to protect him, and she tried to protect that kid next door, too. They’re dangerous people, Detective Bishop. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that girl is guilty of something, too—we just haven’t had anything to prove that yet.”

I gave it some thought—let his words sink it. To an extent, there was some truth to it. She could be hiding worse secrets than her housemates for all we know. And what happened during the time she was missing, too? Skylar Martin ceased to exist from that point of time until today.

But regardless of what I felt, regardless of my doubts, I was going to remain as professional as I could. I was going to do my job the way I’ve been doing it for all these years, and a bunch of crazed serial killers wasn’t going to make me do otherwise.

“You’re letting prejudice precede you, Special Agent Gilliam,” I said as I glared at him, the volume of my voice matching his. “Until we can prove it, she will continue to remain in police custody, but as a witness and potential accomplice. _Not_ a human hostage.”

Another quick glance at the girl and I noticed some life had returned to her eyes, which were now willing to look back at me, sparkling with gratefulness—a certain feeling that, if what Gilliam said was true about her, wouldn’t be so obvious under my careful perception.

Maybe she was just that good of an actress. Maybe I was right—she’s innocent all along.

Turning back to Gilliam, he stared at me with a blank look, somewhat deep in thought, then began to move as he brushed past me and headed for the door.

“Suit yourself,” he said, no emotion at all in that flat voice of his. “If the bastard sneaks into your bedroom at night and gut you open, don’t even think about coming running to me begging for help.”

I swallowed hard, and turned back to the girl. She looked at the two of us with some shred of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I can help. I really do—but they need my help more than you. And I made a promise to myself a long time ago—since the day Toby disappeared—that I’ll always stick by their side. No matter what.”

“It’s okay.” The girl was foolish, but she was brave. Sometimes in life, that was enough. “You really care about these people, don’t you?”

“They’re the only family I have left. And I’m starting to lose them, too.”

There was a short moment of silence, before I decided to break it.

“How did you meet them, anyway?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. I moved to sit back down across from her and settled myself in. “You ran away from home five years ago. What happened since then?”

She gazed at me, an empty look in her eyes, then closed them and sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“Three killers? Did I hear you right earlier? _Three_ killers?”

We got back to the precinct in the afternoon and brought the two teenagers into separate interrogation rooms each, while keeping them handcuffed and under police custody still. Neither of them said anything since we apprehended them back at the farmhouse, with the exception of Skye’s quiet sobs in the back of the car and her friend saying how it wasn’t her fault and trying to calm her down. It seemed like they were acting more like siblings than young lovers, though.

I felt bad for them in the end anyway. They looked innocent enough, which confused me even more when thinking back to Gilliam confronting them back at the farmhouse. It looked like he had everything solved while leaving me completely in the dark, because even by the time we made it back to the office, I still had no idea what in the world was happening, other than the fact that Gilliam arrested them for what I assumed was murder.

But for what murder, I still had no idea which.

“She’s a smart girl, though,” Gilliam remarked as he stared into the empty room where Skye was being detained in. The girl looked depressed but her crying had ceased, leaving her an empty shell of the person I just met a few hours ago. “Crazy for doing what she did, and perhaps a little foolish, but she’s smart if she made it this far. Unless, of course, she’s a murderer herself.”

I shook my head. “Okay, hold on there, pause. Now you’re just accusing everyone of being a killer. What—are you going to accuse me of being one, too?”

He was silent for a moment, before saying, “You have no idea, do you, Detective? Why don’t you go on ahead and have the girl confirm it herself? She’ll tell you everything—if she knows what’s good for her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I couldn’t believe that man—I refused to believe that man—but I have always been a woman of curiosity.

So I entered the room with the straightest face I could pull and sat down in front of her.

I glanced over my shoulder, at Gilliam, who remained standing by the door, then turned to the girl.

She refused to look at me.

“Skye, please,” I began, keeping my voice gentle as to not disturb her, but she didn’t move the slightest bit. “Tell us the truth—the _whole_ truth.”

“Why should I?” Her voice was small, and I felt my empathetic heart reach out to the poor girl.

“Skye, you do know that if you are trying to cover for a confirmed suspect of a homicide, you will be charged for being an accomplice.” I paused, closed my eyes and held myself back. From personal experience, threats wouldn’t work for young ones like her—it would only make matters worse. “If you tell me everything, I promise we’ll work something out to ease your sentence—and your friend’s sentence, too.”

Behind me, Gilliam scoffed, and I resisted the urge to snap at him for being such an asshole this time around. But it appeared that I wasn’t the only one.

Skye lifted her head and turned to glare at my partner.

“You know everything, don’t you?” Her voice was still soft but there was some force in it—the same anger evident in her voice back at the farmhouse. “Why ask me? Why can’t you tell her yourself? Even if I say anything, I doubt you’ll trust me. It’s always like that with the feds, anyway.”

She slumped back down upon her seat and went silent again. I turned my gaze back at him with a questioning look, but he ignored it.

“As the detective said,” he stated, “if you admit to everything, we’ll consider lessening your sentence. Defending three known criminals isn’t going to give you a light punishment, you know.”

“They’re not criminals!” She shot herself out of the chair, her handcuffs rattling and the chair groaning as it was shoved back, but she stood there frozen for a moment, staring at us before she slumped back to her seat again. “None of them did anything wrong. What they’ve done, what they did—they had no choice, okay?”

“Perhaps,” Gilliam replied, but there was no mercy in his voice. “All except one. Jack kills because he wants to, yes?”

There was a short pause, then, “N-No—he didn’t want to. He never wanted to. It was that demon inside of him that made him do it—made him a monster. But he never wanted to kill.”

“Then why steal the kidneys?”

I had a feeling I wasn’t in charge of this interrogation anymore.

Skye looked like she was about to dry heave for a moment before she calmed herself down. “Again, it’s the demon. Jack himself has always been careful this whole time—the time when he still killed, anyway.” There was a pause before she added, “How is this even about him in the first place, anyway? And Toby, too? You were asking me about the theft at the hospital—and none of us were responsible for it. We’ve established that.”

I took a deep breath. “One of the scalpels in the surgical instruments stolen that night was found to be a murder weapon in a recent murder case we’re working on at the moment. And from what we’ve discovered, we have reason to believe that Jack Nichols is behind the murder, along with an accomplice of his, Jeffrey Woods.”

Her eyes went wide as saucers as soon as she heard me said it. “What? No, no, no—that’s impossible. He couldn’t have done it—neither of them did.”

“Oh, so you admit it now, Ms. Martin?” Gilliam spoke behind me, then I heard footsteps approaching our direction and he appeared beside me but remained standing. “You do admit that you do know of their criminal history?”

“Isn’t that much obvious by now?” she snapped at him, but turned back to me with a softer expression. “I know it’s not them. Neither of them have killed for over a year now—well, I don’t know about Jeff, but I know Jack didn’t kill them. He’s been with us for the past year.”

“That doesn’t guarantee anything,” Gilliam said. “If it is true what you said about the demon, then perhaps he couldn’t hold himself back for long. A year is a long time, you know.”

Her hostility returned once more as she addressed him. “We’ve been keeping the demon at bay by having him eat animal kidneys and raw meat instead, and up until now, he’s been improving. He doesn’t kill anymore.”

“But that still doesn’t change the fact that he has killed many innocent civilians before. Just like that little boyfriend of yours next door, and the other one, too.”

“Toby’s like a brother to me!” She straightened her back again, just like a threatened cat, but at least her reaction wasn’t so violent anymore. “You know what happened to him—to us. You know about the fire, don’t you?”

“And the fact that he murdered his own father? Of course.” And that was when I finally realized what Gilliam was talking about. Skye finally found him, I guess. “Then he tried to light the neighborhood on fire—the same neighborhood you lived in—then he disappeared. Not too long after, so did you.”

She looked away once he mentioned this—she might be thinking about her grandfather, which only made the situation even sadder than before.

“You don’t know the whole story,” she murmured. “His father was abusive to him—he was abusive to the whole damn family, dammit. A straight up bastard—he deserved to die, if anything. And when Lyra died…”

Her voice trailed off to nothingness. She must be talking about the girl who died in the car accident not too long before the murder occurred, who I read was, indeed, the sister of Toby Rogers, whom I figured was the Toby she had been referring to this whole time—the boy detained next door.

“When he killed Mr. Rogers, he wasn’t himself either,” Skye continued, regaining the strength in her voice. “He—I-I can’t tell you, but he wasn’t himself. Someone was controlling him—convincing him to resort to murder because he couldn’t handle it anyway. The bastard acted as if Lyra’s death was nothing at all—the death of his own daughter, for God’s sake! And Toby and Lyra… They were close. Toby’s always had issues at school because of his Tourette’s, so he ended up being homeschooled. He had no other friends but Lyra—her death took a huge toll on him, too.”

The way she described about both the siblings… It was clear that Skye had formed close bonds with both of them, judging by the hint of sorrow in her voice whenever she described her late friend.

“But the boy did murder the man,” Gilliam stated, his voice lacking any emotion or pity. “And attempted to burn the rest of the neighborhood down as well—including you.”

“I know.” She was twitching uncomfortably now. Nearly being burned alive would put that much trauma to a girl like her, so I couldn’t blame her. “But he was scared. He told me himself, that he did it because he knew the police were going to catch him, so he tried to get rid of the evidence by burning it all. He didn’t intend for the whole place to burn down—he just wanted to get rid of the evidence.”

“But a criminal regardless,” he scoffed. “And what about the other one? I assume you have an explanation for his actions, too?”

She went silent again, this time longer than before. “I don’t have to give you one—it was in self-defense. That much is obvious. After all, it’s all over the internet.”

My frown grew upon hearing this, so I looked to my partner in hopes of being provided with some information. He caught my gaze for a brief moment, sighed, then turned back to the girl.

“Unless,” Skye added, “You haven’t watched the whole thing at all.”

“I have.”

 _I haven’t_ , I thought to myself. I was going to ask Gilliam about this once we were done there.

“So why are you still labelling him as a criminal?” She then narrowed her eyes at him. “Unless, of course, you know more about it then you’re letting on, Agent Gilliam. Am I right?”

I looked at him again, a little perplexed by her words. I was usually always doubtful of the person on the other side of the table, in situations like this, but I knew Gilliam just as much as I knew about the girl, which gave me just as much rights to be suspicious of him as I was of her.

And when I came to think of it, he did seem to know more about these things than he’s letting on. It could be experience from his own line of work, but he acted so abnormally calm dealing with situations like these, how absurd they might be. If I was in his shoes, I would still be a little disturbed by all of this—even after my own work experience, some of the people I put behind bars had motives and killing methods that surprised me even more each time, and what I’ve found out about the people involved in this case alone wasn’t going to be something easy to forget like a forbidden love story that went awry and ended with murder.

This was something far, far deeper than that.

“ _Special_ Agent Gilliam,” he snapped, but the volume of his voice didn’t fluctuate at all, and there was still no obvious emotion evident in his speech. “Speaking of which, you don’t happen to know where the other two are, do you?”

Another long period of silence. “I’m not going to tell you where Jack is,” she said with the same sense of hostility. “I don’t care how much you threaten me, but I’m not going to tell you.”

“And Timothy Wright?”

She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to tell us, but I knew Gilliam wasn’t going to back down. I sure wish he did.

“He…” She looked down. “He’s dead. He’s been that way for a while now. And he… He was like a big brother to us. We’re all basically family at this point, so don’t even think about suspecting any of us of doing it because we’re not going to be able to live with ourselves if we did.”

It didn’t take the genius to hear the pain in her voice as she said this. And I knew exactly how she felt—well, maybe it was far worse in her part, since she’s lost everything at this point, having done research on her past and all that. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be in her position right now.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” was all I could say, but she shook her head.

“It’s okay,” she muttered indistinctly. “It was inevitable anyway.”

“Very well.” Gilliam took a step back, and the slight disdain I held for him grew even more the moment I noticed he still held no emotion towards the poor girl. “We’ve gone off-track from the case at hand, but we will discuss about your involvement as an accomplice at another time. Bishop?”

I let out a long sigh. I supposed we were done with the weird and back to the normal.

I was going to open the case folder for her but paused halfway and thought twice about what I was going to show her.

“Are you...” I began, “okay with, you know… sensitive material?”

She gave me a tired look, but she wasn’t annoyed with me as much as she was with Gilliam. “As your partner has said, I’ve lived with three people who were known to have murdered at least one person, and one of them used to be a cannibal who ate kidneys for sustenance.”

I stood corrected.

I laid out a few photographs of the victims’ bodies to her, a couple taken at the crime scene and others after autopsy, as well as photos of the victims pre-mortem.

As she had said, she glanced over them without showing any disturbance at all, as if seeing the insides of a dead human body was a common sight for her to see.

“These are the bodies of the people recovered from the scene of the crime,” I said, watching as her eyes continued to scan through the photos. “These are the ones done by Jeff the Killer, and these are the ones your friend killed.”

“ _Allegedly_ killed,” she corrected, then went silent again as she continued to study them. “Well, it’s useless to show me the victims’ faces because even if it’s the two of them who did this, they usually pick them out on random, though Jack likes to steer clear away from the children and the elderly.” She paused, then nodded at the photograph of the Smiths. “How did they die again?”

“They bled out.”

She gave me an absentminded nod as she narrowed her eyes at one of the photographs. “Yeah, no wonder,” she said, her voice becoming somewhat distant and entranced at the same time. With her hands cuffed, she nodded at the picture. “The cuts are too messy, and the stitching is awful, too. Before the demon ruined his life, he used to be a medical student—he was in his third year when it happened. And you know of his criminal record—he’s too cautious to be this reckless.”

It disturbed me a little, how an innocent-looking girl like her would know this much about a serial killer’s motive. Then again, she did live with him for at least a year, I suppose.

She just took a quick scan over the bodies of the Walkers, though. “And as for Jeff’s handiwork… Well, I can’t say it’s difficult to replicate that, but I am quite certain about these ones—the ones you said Jack had killed.”

She leaned back, satisfied that she’s done her work. “He didn’t kill them,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

Gilliam looked far from pleased. “And _who_ do you propose did it?”

She gave us a feeble shrug. “How the hell would I know? Whoever it was stole my keycard back then and tried to frame me for it, too—tried to frame both of us for it. I mean, I know how Jack works but that doesn’t mean I can do it myself. I can’t even slap a mosquito on my own arm, for God’s sake.”

Gilliam just opened his mouth to retort back, but I cut him off before he could even say anything to make matters worse than it already was.

“Do you have any idea who would do such a thing?” I asked. “Anybody at all?”

She gave it some thought. “I mean, it could be anyone who knew I worked at that hospital back then. Maybe a coworker? I mean, I wasn’t the only one who was there at the time the boxes came. Anybody could’ve been there and stole my keycard, or maybe I dropped it somewhere.”

“Great,” Gilliam scoffed, crossing his arms. “This is going nowhere real fast. She could be lying to us for all we know. Otherwise, she’s not going to be of much use for this case other than hostage to lure the damn bastard out—if that thing even has any semblance of family left. It’s our only option left, after all.”

Skye deflated. I couldn’t believe my own ears.

“You’re not going to use her as a human hostage,” I stated with the firmest voice I could muster, standing up to meet him eye-to-eye.

“You don’t understand, Detective,” he retorted back, shaking his head. “I have been after that—that _creature—_ for _years_ now. He has been responsible for countless innocents’ deaths, not to mention the fact that he is _possessed_ by a _demon._ That sort of menace alone should not be allowed to roam around freely out in the open like this.”

“And I understand that, Agent.” I crossed my arms in front of me. I wasn’t afraid of him. “But in our line of work—and you should be aware of this more than I do, given your position—we do not risk endangering another innocent citizen just to do the greater good. What we do is find the decisive evidence we need, track down the real bastard who did this and put them behind bars, _without_ having to force someone to plead to the person who might not even be responsible for this case alone, against her own will.”

“And how are you so sure if the girl is as innocent as she seems?”

His words struck a nerve in me. I found myself doubting again; I glanced over to where the girl was, silent as a mouse as ever, her head turned away but there was no way she couldn’t be hearing our conversation when even the whole precinct could hear us at this point.

“She could be working with that damned creature, for all we know.” I turned back to Gilliam. He was leaning towards me, speaking in a low voice that sounded almost threatening, but ultimately warning. “She tried to protect him, and she tried to protect that kid next door, too. They’re dangerous people, Detective Bishop. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that girl is guilty of something, too—we just haven’t had anything to prove that yet.”

I gave it some thought—let his words sink it. To an extent, there was some truth to it. She could be hiding worse secrets than her housemates for all we know. And what happened during the time she was missing, too? Skylar Martin ceased to exist from that point of time until today.

But regardless of what I felt, regardless of my doubts, I was going to remain as professional as I could. I was going to do my job the way I’ve been doing it for all these years, and a bunch of crazed serial killers wasn’t going to make me do otherwise.

“You’re letting prejudice precede you, Special Agent Gilliam,” I said as I glared at him, the volume of my voice matching his. “Until we can prove it, she will continue to remain in police custody, but as a witness and potential accomplice. _Not_ a human hostage.”

Another quick glance at the girl and I noticed some life had returned to her eyes, which were now willing to look back at me, sparkling with gratefulness—a certain feeling that, if what Gilliam said was true about her, wouldn’t be so obvious under my careful perception.

Maybe she was just that good of an actress. Maybe I was right—she’s innocent all along.

Turning back to Gilliam, he stared at me with a blank look, somewhat deep in thought, then began to move as he brushed past me and headed for the door.

“Suit yourself,” he said, no emotion at all in that flat voice of his. “If the bastard sneaks into your bedroom at night and gut you open, don’t even think about coming running to me begging for help.”

I swallowed hard, and turned back to the girl. She looked at the two of us with some shred of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I can help. I really do—but they need my help more than you. And I made a promise to myself a long time ago—since the day Toby disappeared—that I’ll always stick by their side. No matter what.”

“It’s okay.” The girl was foolish, but she was brave. Sometimes in life, that was enough. “You really care about these people, don’t you?”

“They’re the only family I have left. And I’m starting to lose them, too.”

There was a short moment of silence, before I decided to break it.

“How did you meet them, anyway?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. I moved to sit back down across from her and settled myself in. “You ran away from home five years ago. What happened since then?”

She gazed at me, an empty look in her eyes, then closed them and sighed. “It’s a long story.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bishop's efforts aren't fruitless, and Skye reveals to the detective a part of her broken past before giving Bishop something else to look into.

"We have time." I brought my wrist up for a quick glimpse of my watch. "I won't be leaving until five."

"You won't believe me."

"I've seen worse."

She shook her head, remaining persistent. "Everyone thinks I'm crazy. Jack's demon and Jeff's insanity is nothing compared to this."

"I just want to know what happened, Skye." I wasn't backing down. "All of it. And if you want me to help you, Skye, I can— but only if you tell me the truth."

She was silent, thinking it twice and thrice and more, still hesitant about my request. I, in turn, grew more and more anxious. I kept asking myself: what was she hiding? Was it that bad, to the point that people around her thought she was insane herself? And how in the world were all these things coming to fruition? I thought the whole demon part was where I drew the line.

But... Huh. I scoff at it now. Curiosity killed the cat indeed.

I watched as her eyes flicked over to the recorder on the corner of the table, and the CCTV camera stationed right above us.

"Nothing gets out," she said much more seriously now. "I don't know the consequences of telling people this, but there have been... media sources. Out there in public. There are people who know about what happened, but I don't think anyone believes it. They probably think it's some creative film project with cool special effects or something like that."

I was almost amused by this. I came to doubt the legitimacy of the story she was about to tell me, but seeing how much this case had progressed so far, I just needed to hear it.

And hey, I thought, maybe I'd get some good quality entertainment while I was at it, too, if she was indeed lying straight to my face.

I reached over to press the stop button on the recorder. "The camera just records video, not audio."

"Good." She took a deep breath, then sighed. "I don't know when the whole thing happened, but for me, it started back when Toby killed his father."

* * *

She was coughing.

Skye woke up in a state of shock, and almost as soon as her eyelids snapped open, she could see nothing but gray.

Each breath drew in hot, burning smoke, almost choking her and causing her to cough uncontrollably. It was bad enough that she doubled over, coughing into her hand, and all of a sudden she was on the ground, curled up in a foetal position, almost hitting her head against her duvet. She couldn't even open her eyes wide enough without tearing up as the smoke filled not just her lungs, but also her eyes, burning up her nose and down her throat. It was unbearable.

Covered in sweat and smoke, she struggled to lift herself back up to her feet. She felt like she was in hell, but at the same time, she was still in the same old room she'd been sleeping in for the past four years since she first moved here. The dusty carpet beneath her feet, the furniture around her, the bed she was just sleeping on. What in the world was happening?

Still trying to draw in a clean breath, she stumbled her way to the door, her hand slamming down on the handle before she threw it wide open. She couldn't care less about making a ruckus as the door banged against the wall behind it—she had to get out of here as fast as she could.

"Pa!" she called out as loud as she could, despite the soot filling her lungs. He slept like a rock for all she knew, so she knew she was going to need to put in more than the usual effort to wake him up. "Pa!"

Another coughing fit, then as she regained her breath once more, it was then when she saw it.

Flames. Licking tauntingly upon the wood of the stairs that connected the first to the second floor, and the cracking of the wood as they began to turn to ash.

Skye's eyes widened in shock. She had to get out of there—fast.

Turning to her left, she slammed herself against the door to the master bedroom, throwing it open. Her grandfather was there, coughing in his own sleep but his eyes remained closed—he must be thinking it was some sort of nightmare.

"Pa, wake up!" She threw herself onto the old bed that creaked under her weight, both hands on her grandfather's limp arm as she tried to shake him awake. No response. "Pa! Please! We need to get out of here! The house is on fire!"

In between coughs and all, there was still no response coming from the senior citizen—she began to worry that it might be too late for him, with age being a factor and his own health declining in recent weeks. But she wasn't going to give up—not yet.

She dropped her upper half to the bed for a moment for another brief coughing fit, then, with all the strength she could muster from waking up in such a groggy state, she brought her grandfather's heavy arm around her neck and dragged the old man off the bed. She almost tripped on her own feet with having to carry not just her own weight but also her grandfather's, who was still knocked out cold but was coughing the smoke out of his aged lungs as well.

She whispered silent words of gratitude for having experience in supporting others' weight when they needed her help—namely, experience from having to carry Toby away from the big kids when things went from bad to worse.

"C'mon, Pa," she muttered, mostly to herself as she began to head out the door again, taking slow but sure steps while trying to be sparing in her breaths with oxygen levels inside the closed building running out the more they stayed in here. The air was becoming more and more stuffy and the heat was catching up to them, but much to her relief, the stairs were not completely burned down by the time they got there, as she helped carry her grandfather all the way downstairs, where more flames awaited them.

Did she left the oven on by accident? Or perhaps a fuse blew and the sparks were the cause of the inferno? Regardless of what caused the fire, her survival instincts were kicking to life and she had just one last thought in her mind, perhaps the last thought she might have for the rest of her short life—'get out of here, now.'

The flames ravaged much of the first floor, the wooden foundation beneath her starting to snap and break beneath her very feet and she yelped, skipping ahead as her sights were set on the front door were safety was. The fire was starting to creep up to her, caressing her arms and legs and burning off the hairs of the skin before it began to gnaw on the first layer of her skin. She now realized how true it was, to say that being burned alive was the most painful death imaginable, as she herself soon realized she was starting to get a taste of that experience herself, and she would surely perish along with the rest of the house if she gave up now.

Amidst the roaring of the flames, she could hear it in the distance; sirens, perhaps from a firetruck or police or anyone of authority, someone who could save them. But it sounded so far away still, and they weren't going to make it in time if they stayed put, so she persevered, breaking into a sprint as she dragged the weight of two people closer and closer towards the burning door, which was just several feet away from her grasp now.

Within a split second from that short burst of energy, she ran herself straight through the burning door and it cracked open, sending both Skye and her grandfather tumbling down the porch steps and straight to the front lawn. She thought that once she was outside, she would be safe from the flames; it turned out she thought wrong.

The fire was everywhere. Burning down the once-lush-green grass of the lawn, and even the concrete pavement. How was that even possible? Was this some sort of twisted nightmare? But the fire felt so real—too real, and she could feel a mixture of pain and numbness running up and down her arms and legs, and what was left of her once-shoulder-length hair that had been left singed and ashen.

But with one whiff of the air, she finally realized the true cause of the fire, and it didn't originate from within the house at all.

Gasoline.

The smell was almost pungent in contrast to the flames and what should've been the cold night air, stinging her burnt nose enough to make her nauseous.

She was whipping her head around now, fear starting to creep into her mind as she thought of her neighbors' fate.

And Toby—oh god, what about him?

And he lived just next door from her. 

She snapped her head to the right, at the direction of her best friend's house—indeed, it was up in flames, just as much as her house was, if not worse. She could see the roof starting to collapse and burnt wooden beams dropping to the ground like dead flies.

Tears began to swell up in her eyes again as she began to worry for the worse. She had to get up again—she had to save them, she thought. Toby and his mother; it was bad enough that she lost one of her few closest friends just recently, and she couldn't bear the thought of losing another.

But just as she gathered enough energy to get back up to her feet, a strange feeling began to overwhelm her; she was on the ground again, doubled over and coughing her insides out, but that was the least of her worries.

A loud ringing filled her ears, loud enough that it was almost deafening, giving her head a headache painful enough that she felt as if her head was being sawed in half. Her hands flew to both sides of her skull, her fingernails digging into her temples and covering her eyes as she tried to shake the pain out of her. Her mouth was wide open but she couldn’t even hear her own screaming now—she wondered if this was to be the end of her nightmare.

But this wasn’t the first time this had happened before.

It lasted a few seconds even though it felt like forever, and by the time she finally gathered herself once again, she was spitting out some metallic liquid from inside her mouth. She opened her eyes and stared at the ground in front of her—blood.

It was happening again, she thought. And that only meant one thing.

She whipped her head up, and she saw it.

A tall, slim figure standing in the distance, the sight of it alone making the ringing sound and the headache return once more, but it was somewhat more bearable than seconds before. Its skin was paper white and it wore a formal black suit, which would’ve made it appear friendly, if it weren’t for the blank whiteness it had for a face that lacked any normal facial features whatsoever, and the menacing-looking black tendrils stretching out from its back, ready to take any unwilling victims along with it.

Standing in front of it, much to her fear, was the very same person she had just been thinking of moments ago.

Toby, in his beloved grey jacket, his head turned up towards the figure.

“Toby,” she tried to call out, but her voice had lost its strength and blood began to flood the insides of her mouth once again. “Toby, no!”

Then, all of a sudden, the ringing got even louder and she closed her eyes instantaneously, clutching her head once more at the unbearable sound.

And then it stopped.

All that was left was the flames, and a strange numbness.

When she opened her eyes and looked back up again, they were gone.

The tall figure, and Toby along with it.

It was almost as if they were never there at all.

Everything was a blur from that point on. She couldn’t even feel the burns on her skin, or the blood or the headache. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything at all.

The days came and went. She spent quite the number of them in the hospital, with her arms and legs wrapped in the coldness of burn ointments and bandages. Her grandfather was fine, and so was Mrs. Rogers, but the same couldn’t be said for her husband—Toby’s father.

She couldn’t even believe her own ears when the police first told her about it—about what happened that night, and why Mr. Rogers never came out of that house. She refused to believe her best friend could do such a thing, no matter how horrible that pathetic excuse for a father he had was.

And she wasn’t wrong. That faceless figure—it was the same one she had seen for months now. What was worse was the fact that Toby told her that he could see it, too. And every time it appeared, she would break into a terrible coughing fit, sometimes even coughing out blood, as well as that same deafening ringing, but none of the previous occurrences had been as worse as this.

Whatever it was, it took Toby with it. She knew what she saw, and when the police asked, she tried to tell them, but nobody believed her. They all thought she was crazy, considering her own history of mental issues in the past—mental issues gained from the first tragic incident that robbed her of her own innocent childhood, mental issues that resulted in her weekly counselling sessions at the clinic run by her grandfather’s old friend. And right after she was discharged from the hospital, the number of sessions just doubled per week, and at one point, she even heard the psychiatrist and her grandfather discussing the possibility that she was suffering from schizophrenia from the trauma.

Within the first month, she couldn’t take it anymore. The burden in her mind was just too much. Thoughts of her lost best friend, and the promise she made to Lyra before the accident… She couldn’t even function as a normal human being anymore, and she wondered if she could ever even be one anymore.

One quiet night, she woke up, packed just one backpack of clothes with her, along with all the money she gathered from her allowance so far. She didn’t even make a single sound as she snuck all the way out her room and down the stairs, then before she knew it, she was out of the house.

She made sure to lock the front door back up again before sneaking to the side of the house where her old bicycle was. She lifted it back up and hopped onto it, then, after one last look at the house she would forever associate with the better memories, she began to pedal.

A week later, two Missing Persons reports were filed, one of which attached to a warrant for arrest for voluntary manslaughter.

Neither of them were to be seen ever again, and within a year since their disappearance, it was as if neither of them had existed at all.

* * *

I let her words sink in for a moment. I’ve read her civilian records, but I hadn’t read the case file for Mr. Rogers’ murder yet at the time, but I doubted that it could ever be as detailed as what she’d just told me.

“So that’s it then?” I spoke slowly, trying to make some sense—any sense—out of all this. “You just left?”

Skye nodded. “I didn’t want to. Of course, my grandfather was already dying and I wanted to take care of him, but…” She drew in a sharp breath. “I promised Lyra. I promised his sister, that I was going to take care of him, as though he’s my own little brother. I knew my grandfather would understand—I left him a note explaining the reason why I left, and I think he could tell that I missed Toby too much to pretend as if nothing had happened at all. I just lost one of the few people closest to me back then, and I wasn’t planning on losing another.”

“And that tall figure you described earlier.” I shook my head. “Do you have any idea who it was? Or _what_ it was?”

She swallowed hard this time. “I-I do, but…” She shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t tell you. That’s as far as I will tell you."

My façade dropped into a deep frown. “Why not?”

“Because.” She bit down on her lip. She wasn’t meeting my gaze anymore—she was afraid to. “It’s just that… I’m afraid… that if I tell too much to someone about it—if I tell you too much about it—you’ll get dragged into this as well.”

My frown deepened, and I looked at her questioningly. “Dragged into what?”

“You don’t want to know.” A dark shadow crossed her face. “I know what you said about telling the truth, but I just can’t. I don’t want to be responsible for the miseries of more people than I already am responsible for.”

_More people? There were more?_

“What about the others then?” I asked instead, still curious as ever. She just told me the first part of the story—the first chapter of an entire novel. I wanted to know the rest of it, as much as I was allowed to know, that is. “How did you meet the rest of them?”

“Another long story,” she said decisively. “For another time.”

“An open-ended question.” I was way too damn curious for my own good. “Short answers are fine.”

Her shoulders dropped, sighing in exasperation, but it wasn’t a pure combination of hatred and annoyance like back when she was addressing Gilliam. It was more like exhaustion, and I felt bad about it for a brief moment if it wasn’t for my unending pursuit for the truth of what happened.

“I’ve known Jack for almost as long as I’ve known Toby,” she began as she leaned back against the chair. “We went to the same high school together, but he was one year my senior. He was about to leave for college when I ran away from home, and by the time I met up with him again, he’s already…”

She trailed off, but I already knew what she was suggesting.

“And Tim…” Her lips curved to form a deep frown. “I can’t tell you much, but it had something to do with that tall figure I told you about earlier. He was just like us—he could see that creature every now and then, too, and had horrible coughing fits whenever he did, just like us.” She paused, then, “I think it’s better if you see it for yourself.”

I spaced out for the briefest of moments, then blinked as soon as I realized what she’d just said. “Pardon, what?”

“Marble Hornets.”

I didn’t hear her at first and instead stared at her, blinking in confusion. “What?”

“Marble Hornets,” she repeated. I still couldn’t believe my ears from what I just heard, but she seemed sure of herself this time around. “Just search it up online and you’ll see. It’s okay—a ton of people have seen it before, so I guess there’s no negative effects from watching it through YouTube. Talk to me again once you’ve seen it—then you’ll understand.”

I didn’t talk to her for any longer after that. Her gaze was trained on the flat, empty surface of the table, and when a knock came from the window to the interrogation room and I looked to see Gilliam standing in front of the room and motioning for me to talk to him outside, I promptly stood up and began to head for the door.

And then she spoke again.

“A word of advice, Detective.” I turned around to face her again. Her eyes held a despair unlike ever before. “None of it was ever his fault. None of _this_ was ever our fault. We didn’t ask for this, and if we can stop this, we would. We just don’t know how.”

I swallowed hard. I knew right then and there that whatever I was going to see from this ‘Marble Hornets’ she spoke of, it wasn’t going to be good.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bishop questions Skye about Marble Hornets and how it all connects, but it doesn't take long before a curveball is thrown their way as an unexpected person shows up—at their home base.

I spent my weekend doing exactly what she asked me to.

I didn’t believe it at first. It seemed just a little too elaborate, and at the same time, it was too _absurd_ to be true.

A YouTube channel, containing about ninety-something uploaded videos in total, spanning over a timeline of five years. The channel’s name, Marble Hornets, confused me at first, because there didn’t seem to be any connection between the title to the content of the videos at all, and it was for what I assumed to be a legitimate reason.

The original ‘Marble Hornets’, from what I could infer, was a student film project, created by one Alex Kralie. The creator of the ‘entries’—as the videos were titled and referred to—however, was his friend, Jay Merrick, who was investigating what happened during production of said film project that led to its termination after just two months of filming. What he discovered instead, however, was an unknown, perhaps supernatural figure stalking Kralie, then later Merrick as well, but it soon became apparent that Kralie had turned to violent tendencies and, perhaps driven mad by whatever this entity was, began to kill off former members of the production team for his student film, including Jay and an ally he had gained along the way, a man named Tim.

From what I can assume, this Tim person was the Timothy Wright that both Gilliam and Skye were talking about that other day.

That entity, however, wasn’t the only one keeping eyes on all three of them. Another YouTube channel associated to this one, called ‘totheark’, uploaded videos that seemed to be complementary to some of the entries—one of the ‘entries’ even showed who I assumed to be totheark’s true identity, or perhaps one of them, wearing a mustard yellow hoodie and a black ski mask with red eyes and a red frown. Unlike the entries, however, totheark’s videos contained hidden codes—ones which I never found time to decode because code cracking has never been my forte—and I couldn’t tell if they were assisting Merrick and Wright, or were working against them as well.

At the end of the series of entries, however, it became evident that Jay Merrick met a tragic end—Kralie shot him fatally in one of the entries and was left to die in some abandoned building in God-knows-where. Wright took over and went to confront Kralie, which ended in yet another fatal confrontation in which Kralie met the bitter end.

Wright stabbed Kralie in the neck, and the entire thing was filmed on camera, but because of its nature, even if this man was still alive, he would have been arrested under murder of the second-degree because Kralie had been threatening him, and the murder was in self-defense.

Regardless, Wright was the last man standing, and the entity seemed to have disappeared with Kralie’s body without a trace, something I have yet to recover from. There was another acquaintance of theirs, a girl named Jessica, who somehow also got involved in the whole commotion, who was also revealed to have remained alive, but even her fate was undetermined in the end; the last entry ended with Wright, driving off into the distance, and three words.

‘Everything is fine.’

I guess nothing is ‘fine’ any longer, knowing his true fate after the last of those entries, confirmed by Skye herself.

By Monday morning, I came to the office with perhaps bloodshot eyes and a desperate need for a cup of black coffee. I ignored every single friendly greeting I received from my fellow co-workers and dragged my way to my desk, my head still swimming in an endless pool of thoughts and questions I wanted to ask Skye the second I got to.

It seemed like a really good horror movie—it really did. And at first, I thought it was, until I found totheark’s channel, and did some more research into it. The way the videos were uploaded in random moments, and totheark’s responses appearing right after the appropriate entries. And there was a Twitter account associated to Marble Hornets as well, which was also ran by Merrick, then Wright after the former’s death. There were tweets detailing specific details throughout this otherworldly experience of theirs, and they matched up to the times and dates of the entries as well.

And people—other people, as in outsiders, completely unrelated to any of this as a whole—were _responding_ to those tweets as well. But from what I could tell, they seemed to be oblivious enough, believing that it was all fictional—like an augmented reality type sort of thing. Perhaps they had no idea that the people they’d been interacting with for five years were indeed no longer among the living.

And then, there was that entity. Even in ‘Marble Hornets’, the true nature of that entity itself remained unexplained, and yet just the thought of it made chills run down my spine, and created paranoia inside me deep enough that I couldn’t spend five minutes without looking over my shoulder, in fear of something like what the people in the videos experienced happening to me in real life.

The entity was humanoid in appearance, and from a distance, it would appear like a man wearing a black formal suit. But, from its multiple appearances all throughout the entries, it became obvious that where there should be facial features, in their place was nothing—just blank paleness, making the creature appear faceless, in addition to its abnormal height that could easily over the average person.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. It had _powers_ —as in, supernatural abilities, far beyond what I could comprehend. What I saw in those videos seemed to have matched Skye’s initial description of it that she provided me with the last time we met; in camera, the video would have some visual tearing or glitches, and audio could become distorted. Around people—normal humans—they would begin to experience something like headaches, violent coughing to the point that they were spitting out blood, among other psychological symptoms, including but not limited to schizophrenia, insanity, insomnia, and the list goes on.

I didn’t want to believe this was real for this very reason. Because if it was real, then this creature—this entity, this otherworldly being—indeed existed.

Then again, so does a sociopathic, homicidal maniac driven insane to the point of cutting his own cheeks like the freaking Joker, as well as a psychopathic cannibal who lacks eyes and steals and eats people’s kidneys, so I suppose this shouldn’t come to me as a surprise any longer.

Still, at least those two were real people, with physical, tangible forms and, I think, no supernatural powers whatsoever, other than apparent immortality from what I know, and maybe quick transportation. Not teleportation, not environmental nor psychological manipulation.

I didn’t go to church often, but I pray to God that I never meet whatever this entity is.

Skye was moved to a cell in a separate area in the building, along with that friend of hers who, according to Gilliam, refused to talk under all means. So, after a nice steaming mug of coffee to settle my nerves down, I decided to pay her a visit, and hoped she had answers to at least some of the burning questions still lingering off the top of my head.

When I got to her cell and peered through the metal bars keeping her detained there, she was huddled to herself in the far corner of the bed, hugging her knees to herself and staring into nothingness. She was forced to change into the typical orange garment during detainment, and with it I could see faint, somewhat blonde tips at the ends of her shoulder-length brown hair.

I took out the key, inserted it into the keyhole and twisted it open, causing a large _clang_ to echo throughout the cell and even down the hallway. The girl looked up where she sat, her eyes a little dazed, but when she recognized who I was a second later, she frowned.

“Did you heed my advice?” she asked in a skeptic tone. “Did you listen to what I had to say at all?”

“I’m not like my partner.” I shook my head at the word ‘partner’ and scoffed. “But he knows more than I do—I don’t doubt that he’s seen it before.”

She tilted her head aside. “Let me guess. You’ve watched it, but you’ll take it with a grain of salt, like most would. I suppose that’s wise.”

I closed the door behind me. She didn’t move an inch, just curled up on the bed like she’d just woken up and was too lazy to change out of her PJs. Her expression was the personification of disinterest, like a bored teenager with nothing else to do and waiting out the last of her days with abnormal tranquility.

“I have questions,” I began, and she scoffed, looking away.

“Of course, you do. Everybody does, but never the right ones.”

“What happened all those years ago?”

Her eyes darted towards the ground, her fingers scratching over her hand. “It is not my place to say what happened to them,” she said, her voice becoming increasingly distant. “Unless you’re _that_ oblivious, Detective Bishop, I don’t think it takes a genius to know the surface of it. Some dude’s friend went missing, he tried to search for him, got caught up in some messed up shit, then became a victim himself.”

“I wasn’t talking about Jay Merrick.”

At this, she looked back at me, an eyebrow tilted.

“Timothy Wright.” I took a deep breath. “The man you are acquainted with. That mask he was running around with, and the pills, and yes, I know that he knows something more about whatever that entity is than he’s letting on to his allies.” I paused to swallow the lump growing in my throat. “And he said that there were others. Many others, just like him—like them. Are you—”

“One of them?” The corner of her lip twitched. “I suppose you can say that. And yes, he is more familiar with the Operator than the others—since childhood, in fact.”

“Right, the stolen medical records.” Merrick recovered Wright’s medical record from his childhood spent in mental hospitals in one of the entries—it detailed his history with mental illnesses, and from what I could infer, that faceless entity had been targeting since an early age. It was amazing how he survived until the very last entry.

Skye seemed a little more restless now; she was cracking her head to the side, her arms pulling her legs closer to her chest as her eyes were glancing around the room, almost as if she was overcome with the same paranoia I had after watching those videos.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was beginning to feel worried for her.

“But neither you nor your friend had history of being in a mental hospital.”

“Because it didn’t start early for us as it did for him.” There was a little window right next to her that allowed her a view of outside and allowing some sunlight to flood into the tiny, depressing room. Her eyes wandered to it, gazing into whatever scenery of the outside world she was given. “Toby was more like him, though. He told me he kept seeing things every now and then—he was seeing visions of the Operator, and it got worse since Lyra’s death, because then he started seeing his dead sister everywhere. Like the way Tim was seeing his friend Brian’s dead body everywhere.”

“And you?”

She went still.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” was all she said of it, her voice cracking at the end.

It wasn’t all too surprising. It seemed like everything started to put to motion for them after a major tragic event, as how Toby was after his sister’s death—and Skye, from her civilian record, suffered through something similar as well, with her parents’ death.

It made sense that she didn’t want to discuss it because it would bring back terrible memories for her. Though in truth, I knew from the start that there was something more to it than what it seemed.

“Why are we even discussing this now?”

I looked up. The girl had turned her head back into the cell, but her eyes were everywhere but meeting my gaze.

“I thought I was arrested for being an accomplice of a retired serial killer who was supposedly tied to this case of yours,” she snapped, but her voice remained quiet. “If you plan on arresting me for knowledge of what Tim did to Alex Kralie those last few entries, then it’s pointless because I have nothing to do with it and Tim’s dead. They’re all _dead_.”

“Well, how did he die then?”

Her posture stiffened, and I knew I hit a nerve inside of her but I had to know.

“How did Timothy Wright die, Skye?”

“The same way everyone else did.” Her jaw tensed and her knuckles tightened. “Someone killed him.”

The story was getting more and more depressing at this point. Poor man, I thought.

“Do you have any idea who?” I continued to press on for more answers, but she shook her head.

“You don’t have to know,” she murmured. “It’s not the Operator, but it’s not human and it’s not from here.”

“Skye—”

“The more you get involved, the more likely you are to get entangled in this mess, too, okay?” Her voice was as sharp as a knife, enough that I heard rustling coming from outside the cell. There was another officer who escorted me here, under the Captain’s orders which were in turn under Gilliam’s suggestion, since the latter was still suspicious of the kids’ intentions, and I couldn’t blame him. “And then you’ll end up like Tim, too. And Jay and Brian and Alex and everyone involved with Marble Hornets. You’ll end up like me and Toby. And I don’t want that—I don’t want more people hurt because of me.”

“But this is a world of law, Skye—”

“And the law doesn’t apply this time around, all right?” She scrambled out of the bed, standing up with her hands curled to fists, and I heard more rustling from around the corner.

“Everything all right, Bishop?” I heard the officer’s voice call out, and I sighed.

“Yeah,” I said to him, then turned back to Skye, who was now breathing heavily, staring at the ground before she scrambled back to the bed.

“Look,” she said, in a much calmer tone. “You know enough, and none of that matters now. Tim’s dead, Jay and Alex are dead, and Marble Hornets is nothing but forgotten history. The Operator hasn’t shown up in a while now and I intend to keep it that way.”

She nodded towards the sink right across from the bed, and I saw it. A small plastic bottle, surface tinted with orange and a white cap, containing a good number of white pills inside. It was the exact same one as the ones Wright was taking in those entries, and I could only assume they served the same purpose.

“Arrest me for Jack’s crimes if you will,” she continued with a sigh. “Even though I told you, he didn’t do it, but I can’t say he’s been completely innocent. And the same goes for Jeff. I guess I owe him a favor anyway. Just…” She took a deep breath. “Let Toby go. He has nothing to do with this.”

“Skye, he killed his father. And yes, I know he was being abused, but when the murder occurred, Mr. Rogers was defenseless—it counts as first-degree murder. He tried to _set fire_ to the neighborhood, Skye.”

She went silent, acknowledging the truth in my words. He might’ve had nothing to do with my current case, but he’s a murderer regardless, and by court of law, he still needed to be put behind bars. The least I could do was help plead for leniency under claim of mental illness, with Toby’s own history of schizophrenia.

Just as I was about to say something further to maybe comfort her, I stopped dead in my tracks as soon as I heard some more commotion outside—and voices. I peered out the cell, expecting to see the officer I came down in here with, but he was gone, and I heard his yelling voice in the distance as he headed back upstairs to where the main office was. I immediately began to worry about what was happening, even more so when I heard more yelling from upstairs, but just as I was about to exit the cell, I heard a gasp coming from behind me, and I turned around to Skye’s wide, bewildered eyes.

“He’s here,” she whispered.

I didn’t understand what she was referring to at first, and I didn’t stop to think about it as I made a quick exit from the cell, making sure to lock it back in place before heading straight to the stairs, with one last glance towards it showing me Skye, her hands around the metal bars, her expression almost pleading.

Something was happening, and she knew that.

I kept a hand hovering over my weapon, just in case, as I headed my way back to the main office and stopped as soon as I saw the chaotic state it was in. At first, I assumed there was some kind of break-in, or an arrested suspect was making it increasingly difficult for the officers by actively resisting arrest and making themselves more dangerous than they actually were.

However, I soon noticed that every single officer currently in the building was rushing straight for outside, pulling their weapons out as well. I was about to ask one of them what was going on until I caught sight of Gilliam, jogging towards the front exit of the building as well, so I rushed towards him and took hold of his shoulder, enough to avert his attention to me for a brief moment.

“What the hell is going on?”

He pulled his gun out, nodding towards the doors. “The bastard’s here,” he snarled. “One of them, at least. I guess keeping his little girlfriend here in detention was enough to bring the bastard out of hiding.”

“What?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer me; he sprinted out the building, and with no other choice, I pulled out my weapon as well and headed outside, curious about what in the world he was talking about.

Once I reached the staircase, however, I saw it.

A young man, dressed in a black hoodie and trousers, standing in the center of the small courtyard right outside out building, his gloved hands raised in surrender. A royal-blue mask covered most of his face, its features consisting of nothing more than two eyeholes that contained nothing but emptiness in them, and a strange, ink-like liquid trailing down from the two eyeholes like tears. His hood was down, however, revealing short copper hair and a little of his ashen, somewhat grey-ish skin.

I gasped under my breath. It was Eyeless Jack.

“Where are they?” he shouted from underneath his mask—a voice of a young man indeed, but there was a slight reverb to it that made it seem almost demonic. “I know they’re here. Where are they?”

“Safe.” It was Gilliam who responded, as he took slow and cautious steps towards the boy, his gun pointed straight at the black-clad figure. Everyone else, the other officers, were all pointing their gun towards him as well—I suppose the sudden appearance of a masked figure right outside a law enforcement building would require everyone standing on guard. “From you.”

Even from afar, I heard the young man’s dismissive scoff, showing no fear towards the FBI agent. “I didn’t do it,” he yelled back, glancing around, as though he was making sure everybody heard him loud and clear. “And neither did Jeff. We’re innocent—and so are they.”

“Now, we both know that’s not true,” Gilliam retorted back, a smug tone in his voice that I wished he didn’t use against this dangerous person—creature, or whatever he was.

“Fine.” His hand began to move, and almost in complete synchronization, everybody began readying themselves, watching him with caution as the hand moved towards the mask on his face, pulling it away then threw it to the ground.

His face was just like the picture in his civilian record—almost as if not much time had passed at all—with the exception of several distinctive features: his ashen complexion and his eyes—just empty, endless pits where his eyeballs should be, revealing the flesh beneath it, with his black blood still trailing out of them.

I guess that nickname suited him, after all.

“Go ahead, arrest me then,” he said, sharp teeth peeking out from his mouth. “But remember: I can kill every single one of you here in a blink of an eye before any of you can even lay a finger on me.” To demonstrate, he flipped his hand, and, almost out of thin air, a small metal object—a scalpel—appeared in his hand. I heard the officer standing right beside me swallow hard. “I am willing to go quietly, but only if you ensure that Skylar Martin and Tobias Rogers will walk out of here, free from all charges against them. Unless, of course, we can do this the hard way and I leave here with both of them with me, and all of you with throats gutted out. Your choice.”

I wasn’t calling the shots, but if I was, I would head straight back to the cells and let Skye and Toby walk on free, so instead, I turned to Gilliam, whose hands were clenched around the handle of his gun, a finger right over the trigger, and a bead of sweat trailing down the side of his forehead.

Then, after what seemed like forever, I heard him sigh, and he nodded to the officer right next to me.

“Unlock their cells,” he ordered. “Let them out of there.”

The officer complied to his demands without hesitation, disappearing back into the building faster than he’s ever done anything before, perhaps still fearing for his life. Turning back to Jack, the young man finally bent down to place the scalpel on the ground, then kicked it aside, away from his reach.

Holstering his gun, Gilliam took slow and careful steps towards the cannibal, pulling a pair of handcuffs out. Then, with swift movements, he pulled the cannibal’s hands to his back, which was responded to with a grunt, and secured the handcuffs around him, before he began to lead the cannibal back into the building.

All around me, the officers holstered their guns as well, one of them even picking up the mask and the scalpel, perhaps as potential evidence. I, on the other hand, didn’t move a single muscle at all, turning only to watch Gilliam escorting Jack up the stairs.

For a split second, the cannibal turned his head towards me, the bottomless pits where his eyes should be staring straight at me as though his eyes were indeed there. Spiders ran down my spine, but I soon realized he was looking at me with acknowledgement, like he knew that I’d been talking to Skye this entire time.

Just as they reached the top of the stairs, however, I heard footsteps rushing straight towards our direction. Skye appeared in the doorway right afterwards, stopping mid-sprint as soon as her eyes fell on me, then Gilliam, then Jack. She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth, and before I knew it, she ran straight towards him, engulfing him in a hug.

Another figure appeared right behind her—Toby, somewhat limping out the building, but as soon as he noticed both of his friends standing there, he, too, ran straight for them and hugged them, like it’s the first time they’ve seen each other in decades.

Muffled voices were all I heard from their direction, but I turned to Gilliam with a condescending look, as for some reason my heart was reaching out more towards them than I should. I was aware that all three of them had blood on their hands, and Skye could’ve been lying to me for all I knew, but the sentimental moment between the three of them was unmistakable to the point that I sympathized them.

Gilliam, on the other hand, did not. He responded to me with a cold, hard gaze, and his impatient self shoved the cannibal away from his two friends and back on course, leaving both Skye and Toby behind, trembling and still in tears.

I approached them, touching Skye’s shoulder as gentle as I could.

She clenched her jaw and turned towards me, her eyes shining. She didn’t say a single word, before turning back to where the two had disappeared off to. Then, along with the other officers and soon Toby right after, we began to walk.

_What awaits us now, I wonder?_


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilliam insists in dealing with the notorious Eyeless Jack, but not before confronting Bishop about what she's heard and seen. Meanwhile, Bishop decides to take matters into her own hands as she asks Toby a few more questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aware that actual canon SCP Foundation doesn't deal with Creepypasta entities, but I figured that if they'd existed in the same universe, the Foundation would consider classifying them as SCP objects and contain them, since they're often not exactly 'humans' per se and the circumstances in which they ended up the way they are now are sometimes quite 'anomalous' and 'defy the norm that we live in.' So there you go.
> 
> Otherwise, e.g. the case of Jeff the Killer, he's a sociopathic maniac who's probably on the Most Wanted list anyway.

“I have no idea how the hell anybody can live with these people.”

We were standing in front of the interrogation room again. Most people had gone home at this hour, with just few lights in the main office remaining turned on. It was much quieter now, with the lack of presence of people whispering behind our backs about the sudden appearance of the monstrous yet humanoid figure right in front of the building—how we were insane enough to take up a case where the suspect was someone like Eyeless Jack. I bid goodbye to another fellow officer as she headed out the building, leaving me alone with Gilliam and the silent cannibal sitting inside the room before us.

His hands still handcuffed behind the chair, still and unmoving. It unnerved me a little—it wasn’t every day that you see someone—no, some _thing_ —like him. And even to this day, I still don’t want to believe what Gilliam had been saying since the very beginning was true, but he was right there, in the flesh.

Skye was in there as well, chatting with him though there were no smiles in either of their faces now, while Toby was next door—not in an interrogation room, but in the waiting room, and without handcuffs either, per Gilliam’s agreement with Jack. Both of the kids refused to leave after what happened, and I didn’t even need to talk to them about it to know their intentions were to stay here, as long as their friend stayed in here.

“They’re still people, Gilliam,” I said with a sigh. “They were kids once. Normal kids. Humans. I think they still are.”

“Humans don’t just kill other humans without remorse,” he retorted back. “Unless they’re sick psychopaths who deserve to be locked up in prison, put in death row and burn in hell.”

“For Christ’s sake, Gilliam—”

“You’re sympathizing something you don’t fully comprehend, Detective Bishop.” He turned to me with a hard, set gaze, and I found myself taking a step back in defense. “And do not patronize me or think that I am any less of a human than they are—I take my job quite seriously, Detective, and I suggest that you do, too, otherwise you are no different than they are.”

He sighed, taking a deep breath, before he continued, “I have read your record, Detective. You have quite the reputation around these parts, and the Captain himself has stated that you are the best person they have here, which is why you were assigned to a case like this in the first place. And I respect that.”

I swallowed hard. I never liked being lectured, and just as I parted my lips to say something in return, he cut me off right away.

“But you should not cloud your judgment around people like them. Many of them are known to be manipulative, and not just because of their nature. You are aware of this yourself—serial killers, known murderers who bend the truth so they can be let go easy. Even humans are willing to go through extreme lengths in desperate situations—if there is still some semblance of humanity in them as you claim they do, then they are no different than those people you put behind bars.”

He glanced back into the room, his expression turning serious once more as he moved towards the door. Just before he entered, however, he gave one last glance in my direction, but he wasn’t meeting my eyes.

“I’d invite you to join me,” he said, “but I think you need to gather your thoughts—clear your head a little, Detective. No offense, but if we are to proceed, I suggest you do.”

I didn’t say anything in return—I just stared at him, watching as he entered the room with no prior warning whatsoever, startling the two teenagers inside, before closing the door shut behind him and starting the interrogation himself.

I didn’t follow him inside. He was right, and I acknowledged that. I merely watched the entire thing unfold through the window blinds as nothing more than a mere witness. The two of them kept their distance as soon as he was in there with them, and their postures were much more defensive. Skye wasn’t even looking at him at all, arms loosely crossed in front of her, while Jack was staring at the agent with no fear evident on his face at all—his blue mask was on the table, along with the scalpel, both in evidence bags.

But just a few minutes in, I could tell it wasn’t really going anywhere, just from the frustration clearly etched upon Gilliam’s face, Jack’s stiff posture and Skye’s unwillingness to say anything at all—I doubt she revealed anything much to him, as much as she was willing to open up to me about earlier in the cell.

I couldn’t stand around any longer, knowing he wasn’t going to get any useful information from either of them, and he wasn’t going to let me inside—I had a feeling his ‘suggestion’ was more like an order from a superior, and there was no other way around it.

But instead of heading somewhere else to ‘clear my head’ as he wanted me to, I headed next door, to the visiting room, where the twitching boy was waiting. His hair was wild and unkempt, like he’d just woken out of bed. His skin had an abnormal pallor, but still more human than Jack’s. His head was turned to the ground, not daring himself to look at anyone since the commotion earlier, with people shooting condemning glares at him as well. He was quiet the entire time he was here, just idly picking at the bandages wrapped around his hand—something I didn’t notice since the first time he got here—the silence making me concern for him even more.

Then again, remembering Gilliam’s words about these people, sometimes the quietest individuals hide the worst secrets, so I made sure to approach him with caution and my guard up as I normally would when interrogating suspects.

“Hey there, kid,” I said with a gentle voice, as to not startle him. He glanced up, acknowledging my presence at the very least, but said nothing. “Toby, right?”

With slight hesitation, he finally nodded.

I nodded back towards the interrogation room. “They’re good friends of yours, aren’t they?”

Again, he showed the same response.

I sighed. _This is gonna be difficult_. “I’m not here to hurt you, Toby—I’m here to help.”

“Th-that’s what they all say.”

His voice was gentle for someone as old as him, and it startled me to hear him even speak anything in the first place. Even so, it was no different than Skye’s own voice whenever she speaks—it was a voice that belonged to a person who’s been through more than enough of their fair share of horrors.

I shook my head. “I’m not like them, and I’m not lying. I want to help you and your friends, Toby—I really do.”

“Your partner d-doesn’t, though.” I froze at this, but the boy continued to betray no emotion. “All-all of us know better, so don’t think that h-he’s getting anything out of any of us.”

 _All of us know better_. I frowned at those words. “What do you mean?”

He finally turned to me, his dark, somewhat bloodshot eyes wide, as though he was studying me. His tics even began to tone down a bit, then, all of a sudden, his blank expression turned to surprise then to understanding.

“Y-you don’t know,” he said, “do you?”

“Know about what?”

“A-agent Joel Gilliam.” He turned to the direction of the interrogation room. “H-he hasn’t told you everything, has he?”

“What are you talking about, kid?”

“He’s not who h-he says he is, miss.” His quiet voice now had hints of distress in it, and his eyes stared back at me with worry. “He’s p-part of the Foundation—he doesn’t seem like it, but we kn-know. I mean, after all t-this is done, you don’t honestly t-think he’s going to put us i-in jail, do you?” He let out a feeble scoff. “People like _us_ —t-they’re not just going to leave us be, just like that. T-they’re going to take us back to the facility.”

“Facility? Foundation?” I couldn’t make sense of any of his words anymore—at that point on, I thought he was just spouting out nonsense. “He’s an FBI agent—”

“But that d-doesn’t mean he works _exclusively_ f-for them. That’s just h-his cover.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to trust you?” I questioned. “How do I know you’re not lying to me? How do I know any of you aren’t lying to me?”

His gaze turned cold. “Would we have any reason to?”

“You killed your father, Toby. Timothy Wright killed his friend, and that friend of yours inside that room is a cannibalistic killer.”

He flinched as soon as I mentioned Wright’s name, and I felt a pang of guilt immediately after—the man must’ve been close to Toby as he was to Skye, too, and perhaps even Jack.

Hence why I felt sorry for them in the first place.

“Believe us if y-you will.” His voice was emotionless, and he looked away from me, staring into nothingness. “Whatever happens, we’re going back t-there, anyway. I g-guess it’s inevitable. We c-can’t run away forever.” He paused, then added, “At least t-they won’t be able to get us while w-we’re in there.”

“They?”

He didn’t respond immediately; Toby stiffened, as though his breath was caught stuck in his throat, and then he began coughing. It was mild at first and he tried to wave it off, but then it started to grow worse, to the point that he was bending over in pain, putting a hand over his mouth as he struggled to contain it.

I was about to stand up, worried for his condition, until his free hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans and fished out something from inside it. Bringing it closer to him, I noticed the orange tint of a familiar-looking bottle full of pills in his hands, as he popped it open and poured out a few, before swallowing them whole and then going silent for a few moments.

After a while, his condition eventually steadied back to normal, save for his deep breathing. His shoulders relaxed as he leaned back against the couch, his head turned up the ceiling which he stared upon for some time until my curiosity decided to break the silence again.

“Those pills you have with you.” I nodded to the orange bottle in his hand. “I saw same ones in Skye’s possession, earlier when I visited her cell. Tim Wright had them, too.”

This caught his attention, as he turned back to me with a quizzical look on his face. “Wait—h-how did you know that?”

“Marble Hornets.” To put it simply into words. “Skye suggested I take a look into that. She says it explains what happened to Wright—and a little about what happened to you guys as well.”

His gaze turned distant as he looked down at the bottle in his hands. “Oh, y-yeah. He, um… he always made sure we have them with us. So _he_ can’t get inside our heads again.”

 _He_. Toby must be talking about the Operator, I figured. But I could sense the fear evident in the boy’s voice as soon as he mentioned it, like he was talking about Voldemort from _Harry Potter_ , but it didn’t sound fake whatsoever. There was genuine terror behind his voice, and I could’ve sworn the boy glanced around the room for a quick split second, as though he was terrified that the entity itself might appear right before his eyes.

But then I thought back to his words, how he phrased his sentences and his reactions. Then I recalled Skye’s own personal account of the murder the boy had committed, all those years ago. I didn’t have a chance to talk to the culprit himself before, but now that he was there, I had to ask for more.

“Toby,” I began. “When you killed your father. It— _he_ , was there, wasn’t he? The Operator, I mean.”

He stiffened, as though he’d been struck by sudden paralysis, then swallowed hard before he gave me a slow nod.

“Did you mean to kill your father?”

His breathing started to pick up and he cracked his neck to the side. “H-he deserved it. He didn’t care about any of us—never d-did. There was never a night when he wouldn’t c-come home drunk. He didn’t even give a shit when Lyra…” His voice trailed off into nothingness. “When Lyra died. But I… I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I mean, I-I’m glad he’s gone, but…”

The pain in his voice was unmistakable. Not even the most perfect actor—the best liar in the world could fake something like that. Police reports detailing the incident stated his mother, the only surviving witness, had said the same thing about the incident—her son couldn’t have done it. He was brash and reckless, like every teenager his age was, but never violent. Never murderous. Even though she witnessed the crime with her own eyes, she refused to believe it was true.

The boy suddenly began to clutch his head again, his hands covering his eyes. “The voices,” he murmured in a strained voice. “The voices told me to do it— _he_ told me to do it. I wasn’t in control—I didn’t know what I was doing. Then… all I could remember next was the look on my mom’s face, and my dad’s dead body in front of me. That’s when I… I…”

“You tried to run away.” I sighed. “And you set the house on fire.”

“I didn’t want to go to prison. I t-thought I could cover my tracks but then the fire got out of control, and then _he_ was t-there.” He bit down on his lower lip, trying to steady himself as he struggled to regain his breath. Me, on the other hand—I was a second away from calling paramedics in case something happened, then his breaths became deeper and longer. “I-I didn’t see Skye—I couldn’t see anything—but I think I heard her voice. But the r-ringing was too loud, then everything went to black. I couldn’t remember m-much from then on anymore, but I remember… I remember blood. I remember screams. I t-think I did things—bad things while _he_ was in my head.”

I was overcome with shock as soon as I heard this. The boy had just confessed to me that he had killed others—not just one person, but others. There were others.

Maybe that was what Gilliam was talking about. Maybe he knew that this boy was a serial killer, too.

“How did you get here, then?” I asked. “Skye said she tried to find you. How did she? Where did she find you?”

His jaw became tense, and there was a long pause. “S-She shouldn’t have. I wish I could tell her then—if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have needed to be here. I-It was my fault. She got too involved because it was my fault. I… I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have given in. We wouldn’t be stuck here if it wasn’t for me.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

I almost jumped at the sudden appearance of a new voice in the room, and I looked up to see Skye standing in the open doorway, arms wrapped around herself, staring at Toby with a mix of pity and regret. The boy looked up as well, uncontrollably cracking his head to the side again before he averted his gaze away.

“None of it was your fault,” she added. “They were going to find me sooner or later anyway—there’s no escaping from that. But you were right; if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here—I’d be in whatever hellhole they put me into, half-alive and half-dead.”

“But I led you to them!” Toby stood up, his fingers clenched into fists, almost looking like he was on the verge of tears. “If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have found you so quickly—”

“Look, it doesn’t matter anymore, okay?” She huffed out a sigh, then turned to me for a split second, eyeing me up and down as her mouth formed a slight scowl, before turning back to the boy. “I wouldn’t be alive right now if it weren’t for you, and the others, so stop blaming yourself for everything that happened.”

“Is the interrogation done?” I tried to ask, and she turned to me in an almost agitated manner before her expression morphed into exhaustion.

“Your partner decided he wants to talk to Jack alone,” she replied in a monotonous voice. “Not that it’ll bring him anywhere closer towards the truth about your case, but I think he just wants to dig up the buried hatchets of the past again—understandable, but foolish in my opinion.”

I sighed and crossed my arms, before standing up to talk to her face to face. “Skye, I need to talk to you about something, too.”

This piqued her interest, though she managed to keep it hidden the best she could. “Hmm. What’s up?”

“Earlier, Toby mentioned something about Agent Gilliam being part of some kind of foundation or something like that.” I watched as her expression turned from confusion, to realization, and finally to shock, which she redirected to a glare at the young man beside me. “He also mentioned it’s the reason why you’ve been withholding information from either of us—from him in particular. Is that true?”

She didn’t respond to me at first. Instead, she glared at Toby in bewilderment, shaking her head in frustration.

“You said what?” she asked him, her tone more demanding than before. “Are you crazy?”

Toby shrugged as though it was nothing. “What? I figured the nice detective needs to know a couple secrets the agent is hiding of his own, since she knows too much about this anyway. We’re not the only ones she should keep an eye out for.”

“But you do realize that if the Foundation knows about this, they’re not going to let it slide?” She closed her eyes and let out a deep exhale. “She knows too much, but that doesn’t mean we can’t let her know more than she should. We promised to ourselves we’re going to keep outsiders out of this.”

“Skye.”

She turned back to me. I couldn’t even read her expression anymore, but I’d had enough. She was right—I was an outsider, but talking about their own problems with some supernatural or paranormal entity was one thing, and talking about my own partner in this case was another.

Again, it was something I couldn’t believe. And I figured I could trust the FBI agent assigned into this case with me, with the Captain putting his trust on him and everything. I thought his tale of having chased these freaks, the story he wove, checked out and seemed legitimate enough that I’d begun to be more motivated to help him solve these cold cases once and for all—not to mention my curiosity on how the Smiths and the Walkers met their bitter end in the first place.

But now we’d begun diverting our attention elsewhere, and now, it didn’t seem like he minded that at all. Skye and Toby came under suspicion under their own circumstances, and those beyond the case we were working on, too. From what I knew from other officers, he conducted his own interrogations on both, and considering the bitter expressions on either of their faces whenever they talked about him, neither instances ended well.

I took the deliberation to close the door behind her and gestured for her to take a seat. It wasn’t an interrogation room, but I was going to press for more answers, no matter what—I never liked people hiding things from me, anyway.

“So, tell me then,” I said as I moved to take a seat opposite to them. “Who is he? And who are you? What happened all those years the two of you went missing?” When neither of them began to talk and merely exchanged uncertain glances at each other, I added, “Please, Skye. I need to know what I’m dealing with here. Why were you running away? And _who_ are you running away from?”

After a long period of silence, she finally spoke up. “Too many,” she said, chewing on the insides of her cheek. “Including that partner of yours—FBI Agent Joel Gilliam?” She scoffed. “More like SCP Agent Joel Gilliam.”

I shook my head. “What?”

She took a deep breath before answering. “The SCP Foundation, an organization dedicated to investigation, research and containment of any anomalous individuals, entities, locations, phenomenon and the like in the world we live in today. Joel Gilliam, from what I can assume, is the agent dedicated to investigating, arrest and recovering SCP subjects like us, especially since we escape ‘containment’ all those months ago.”

“You what?”

“I’m not done yet.” She closed her eyes. “It’s not like some ordinary, high-security prison, Detective Bishop—it’s where freaks like them keep us all in solitary containment, not to keep the world safe from us, but to study us; they say the purpose of their organization is to ‘secure, contain, protect,’ but human curiosity knows no bounds.” And for a second there, I could’ve sworn she gave me a look at that last bit. “They’re the secretive, covertly funded by the government type of organization, but sometimes they’d like to go off-radar and go through unapproved and sometimes unethical procedures, with the government turning a blind eye and everything.” She paused for a brief moment, then added, “There was a containment breach at the time—all four of us took advantage of it to get as far away from that damned hellhole as possible, and I guess we’ve been on the run ever since.”

“Four of you?”

She nodded. “Myself, Toby, Jack and Tim. Jack was contained for obvious reasons. The rest of us got in because of our past experiences and ties to the Operator and all, but since things have been quiet these past few years, they just kept us in custody, but we were treated no different than SCP objects were.”

“Well, well, look who’s been telling stories to the class.”

I almost jumped at my seat again, but as soon as I recognized who the voice belonged to, my blood ran cold. I snapped my head to the door—I didn’t even hear it open, but there he was, hands in pockets, his cold, hard gaze sweeping over the three of us. Long gone was the respectable government agent I was working with the past week, as he stared back at me with a hint of annoyance in his gaze and even more so at the two others.

Behind him was Jack Nichols, hands handcuffed behind his back still, his head bowed down as he refused to look at even his two closest friends.

“I thought I asked you to take a breather, Detective Bishop.” His voice was too monotonous for comfort, and I found myself wincing at his condemnation. “Not to conduct a little Q&A session of your own.”

“So it is true, then?” I demanded, squinting my eyes at him. “You’re part of that—whatever that SCP Foundation thing is?”

He looked away and sighed. “Hmm. I suppose it’s nice that I no longer need to lie straight to your face, Detective. Especially since I’ll be taking these three back to where they belong.”

He then began to approach the two others sitting next to me, but something happened. I wasn’t prepared for it—didn’t think something like that could happen at all, and I don’t think that even to this day, I can ever recover from this.

It began with the ringing.

A loud-pitched noise, seemingly originating from nowhere in particular, like a sharp pin drilling straight through our heads and into our brains. It was near deafening and it immediately stimulated an agonizing pain aching through my head, and before I knew it, I had my eyes closed shut, my hands clawing at the sides of my scalp and I was doubling over on the ground. When I opened my eyes, everyone else in the room was just in the same horrifying state as I was, and then it got worse.

Static. Our ears were filled with static, like the kind from an old, broken television set, or a radio out of range from civilization. It filled our brains, amplifying the headache and making it a thousand times worse than before. Then it felt like something was lodged in my throat, prompting me to cough my lungs out, and even worse was that I felt something running down from my nostrils. When I peeked my eyes open, I was staring at the ground, the carpet before me stained with droplets of blood, the lights in the room flickering uncontrollably.

The others were in a worse state than I was. Skye and Toby were wheezing in addition to their cough, which seemed like a million times worse than mine, and soon I began to notice them spitting out _blood_ from their mouths. The latter had started to scream, his hands running through his hair as he kept on yelling incoherent words.

In the hallway, both men were on the ground, with Jack leaning against the wall behind him, but his cough was tamer than ours, though he kept his face hidden away from us. Gilliam was leaning his weight against the doorway, his hand on his mouth, his eyes glaring at something inside this room.

A tall figure, towering over all of us, standing in the far corner of the room. My vision was too blurry to see it clearly, but all I remembered was blackness covering its humanoid figure from where its neck should be to its toes. When I looked up, all the blood rushed from my face and my curiosity was replaced with pure terror, as I realized the figure standing before us lacked a face, just nothing but blank whiteness.

I gasped. The Operator.

I threw myself back, my head almost hitting couch behind me as I struggled to contain my cough with my hands on my mouth, all the while ignoring my nosebleed. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, tears brimming my eyes as I tried to blink them away, keeping them shut and hoping it would end soon.

And then everything stopped.

And they were gone.

Not just the entity, who seemed to have appeared and disappeared in a blink of an eye—but so was the two teenagers who were in this room with me. All three disappeared without a trace, as though they were never here at all.

I panicked. I stood up, breathing hard and light-headed to the point that I could barely maintain my balance, eventually toppling over to where the two were.

I snapped my head to Gilliam, who was still trying to recover from the shock. Behind him, Jack appeared unfazed by what happened, but as soon as he noticed the absence of his friends, he rushed straight into the room, to where they were, and I could hear the heavy breathing mirroring his panic.

“Skye?” he called out, his voice still strained and hoarse. “Toby? No, no, no—where are you guys?”

“Jack—”

“No, no, no, no, no.” His hands went to his head, raking through his hair. “No, this can’t be happening. Not again—not again!”

“What the hell did you do?”

I turned to Gilliam, who had finally regained his composure and was back on his feet, approaching the cannibal with a hand stretched out but the latter twisted around, slapping the hand away.

“I didn’t do anything!” And for the first time, I could hear the demon’s voice inside him—the reverb in his voice was more obvious than ever, and it scared me, save for one thing about it: the fear hiding behind the voice. “H-He took them—the Operator took them!”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye and Toby have gone missing, leading Bishop and Gilliam to make an uneasy alliance with Jack before an unexpected visitor appears to wreck some havoc. Meanwhile, an unknown entity wakes up in a mysterious world.

“What do you mean ‘He took them’?”

The cannibal sitting in front of us violently shook his head, as he had been the past few minutes. We were back in the interrogation room again; it was late at night, but after what just transpired, I didn’t think I was going to get a good night’s sleep at all, not without demanding answers for the questions in my head. Heck, I didn’t even dare to go back to my empty home alone, let alone close my eyes and put my guard down to get some rest.

“The Operator,” he stuttered out again, clutching his arms to himself as he kept his gaze on the flat metal table. “The Administrator. The Tall Man. Their Keeper—whatever it is they call them these days. But that _thing_ took them. _Again_.”

“Again?” I turned to Gilliam, who was standing at the corner of the room by the door, glaring at the hooded figure as though he was worried Jack might disappear into thin air as well. “You mean, this has happened before?”

“Of course, it has,” he scoffed, but his voice showed his fear more than he was letting on. “How’d you think they went off-the-radar for so long? Even after spending two whole years searching for them in every single nook and cranny of this earth? Jeff is all too willing to tag along just to get the chance to stab the fuck out of anyone who stands in our way—he didn’t care what I was doing or where we were going. Helped me in getting my daily fill, too.”

“You were _searching_ for them for two years?” I blinked, couldn’t believe my own ears. “So the whole popping up all over the map thing—it wasn’t random at all?”

“Half of the story.” He then turned to Gilliam and growled. “Police and the SCP were looking for us, too, so we just had to book it when they get too close while trying to find out where the hell the Operator took them to.”

“And where did he take them to? Where did you find them?”

“I didn’t find them.” He turned back to me and stared straight at me with his hollow eyesockets. “They found me. It’s impossible to find them—they were in a place no one could reach, not even me. Some parallel dimension, only accessible to the Tall Man himself or any member of the Collective.”

“And let me guess.” Gilliam placed his palms flat on the table. “They were—or possibly still are—part of this Collective, aren’t they?”

I shook my head. More words I didn’t understand, more implications I had to question about. But I was too far gone now.

“Not them,” Jack replied, glaring at my partner. “Not really.”

“And what, pray tell, is the Collective again?”

“Servants of the Operator,” Gilliam answered, but he wasn’t taking his eyes off the cannibal. “Creatures— _monsters_ like him, like _it_. They’re his puppets—proxies who carry out its every order and command, if you will.”

“The Operator has all sorts of different lackeys working for him, doing his dirty work,” Jack added, turning to me with less hostility in his gaze than it was when he was glaring at Gilliam. Just like the two others, he didn’t trust my partner at all, and now, the trust I held for him was beginning to waver as well. “Toby became one of his human proxies—the runts of the pack—when he was first abducted. Tim would’ve been one, too, if he didn’t have luck on his side and kept himself sane enough to resist the Operator’s influence.”

“And Skye?”

He went silent for a brief moment as he averted his gaze away. “Skylar, she… She got the worst end—she became one of the vessels.”

“What do you mean, ‘vessel’?” Gilliam asked, cutting me off just as I was about to ask the same question.

“Collective members—the ‘monsters’ you mentioned—can’t do anything in our world unless they possess someone—a living host, a vessel. For as far as I know, the entities have chosen their vessels here since decades ago, so the chosen are ‘destined’ to be their hosts since the day they were born. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

Jack turned to me. “There are—how do you say it—‘special’ cases in which one can be free from the Collective’s hold, even if it was just for a moment. Even so, that doesn’t mean the Collective or the Operator himself will be happy about it, and I don’t think there’s a way to shake them off our backs once you’re in their sights. There’s only two people who have managed to do it so far.”

“Noah Maxwell,” Gilliam said with confidence. “And I suppose Skylar Martin did, as well.”

“But under different circumstances. Noah Maxwell survives because the entity that he was supposed to be the vessel for, Firebrand, manipulated time itself to mess up the Collective’s plans and keep Noah safe from them. Siren, the entity who possessed Skye, wasn’t strong enough, not as much as Firebrand; the day I found them, Skye was in the middle of a forest—in the middle of nowhere—brain-dead, catatonic, clutching Toby with her. The boy escaped with a few scratches and some mental trauma, but that was it. Skye, on the other hand…”

I almost flinched right where I sat as the realization dawned upon me.

The framed photographs in their house. The second one I saw—with all the men standing up and Skye was slumped over in a wheelchair, in a hospital gown with an IV stand beside her, eyes open but dead empty.

That must’ve been taken not too long since she was recovered from whatever hell she escaped from. I didn’t even want to know what hell they did escape from.

“How did she recover?” I asked, but Jack’s expression turned bitter right after as he refocused his attention back to Gilliam.

“The SCP,” he said through gritted teeth before he looked down. “They did experiments on her—electroconvulsive therapy and constant medication. She snapped out of it sooner or later, but thank god quick enough that we could get out of there the second we could—but I guess we can’t run too far. Neither could Skye and Toby from the Collective.”

My jaw fell open as I snapped my head to Gilliam. “Is that true?”

No response. I swallowed hard, but just as I turned back around to say something else, the lights went out.

I almost jumped. Everything went dark in an instant, and it took an extra second for my eyes to readjust to the darkness that now surrounded us. It seemed like a total power failure—even the table lamp was off, and so were the heaters and air conditioners throughout the entire building. There was a barely audible hum as the remaining power shut off, leaving us in almost total darkness.

And with the kids’ disappearances and Jack sitting right in front of us, ‘unnerving’ would be an understatement to how the situation felt like.

“A blackout?” I found myself questioning, glancing out the blinds covering the windows. There were dim-yellow street lights about thirty feet away from the front of the building, as well as more light pollution coming from buildings in the distance in the city’s center, providing some illumination but not much—just enough to allow us to barely make out the outlines of anything around us.

“Unlikely,” Gilliam sighed beside me, and I heard the click of his gun. “It wouldn’t be a blackout if we’re the only one in the entire city without any power. I thought you would know better, Detective.”

I restrained my urge to scowl at him.

Then I heard a bang. A loud, metallic noise, almost inaudible, coming from the back of the building.

“Did you have anything to do with this?” Gilliam snapped, turning his attention to Jack, but the cannibal just shrugged.

“Do I look like some all-powerful supernatural entity that can use telekinetic powers to shut off the electricity with my hands handcuffed behind my back?”

Again, no answer, but this time I was struggling to hold back my snicker.

“Detective, stay here,” he ordered me instead, and when I turned to him, his gun was in his hands as he began to approach the door. “I’ll head outside and look around for the backup generator.”

“Outside, in the back.”

“Got it.” And with that, I heard the sound of the door clicking then swinging open with a light _swoosh_ , and that was when I heard it.

Growling. A low, ominous, feral growling, and it came from right outside the interrogation room.

“What the f—”

And just as he stepped outside, the growling turned to a snarl, then a loud bark as Gilliam’s cries echoed through the empty building.

“Ack!”

“Joel!” But just as I was about to rush through the door to aid him, I stopped right in my tracks as soon as I heard gunshots.

Three of them. Then more snarling, and more of his yells in between.

My hands flew to my mouth. I couldn’t see what was going on—whatever it was, it disappeared with Gilliam around the corner to the main office area. Loud crashes and bangs followed—sounds of struggle—but as soon as I laid a single hand on the door frame, I heard a voice coming from the other end of the hallway, the one that led to the back door.

“Good boy.”

It was low and raspy but clear, with a slight hiss that made it seem as though it was a whisper, but behind it was the voice of a young man, and it made more chills run down my spine.

“Detective.”

I turned around to face Jack, but his gaze was fixed at the open doorway.

“Detective, get back.”

I didn’t need to be told twice to comply—I didn’t know what the hell was happening, but from the look on his face, I could tell he did. Step by step, I began backing away to the back corner of the room, my eyes trained at the empty doorway still, tension building up inside me as the sounds of struggle coming from the office area continued, until there was just the feral growling left. I feared the worst for his fate, but even more so for what was about to happen to _me_.

Then there were footsteps. One by one, following my own pace as I put as much distance as I could between me and the doorway, but they weren’t mind—they came from the hallway. There were light clicks coming from inside the room, but my mind was too preoccupied and filled with the worst case scenarios to even bother to care, and the room was too dark to even allow me to see where it came from.

“I know there’s another,” the voice from the hallway called out once again, even more terrifying than before. “I know you’re in here. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

My voice caught stuck in my throat. I was in the opposite corner of the room, not daring to take my eyes off the doorway a single bit, and then I saw it.

A pale hand, grasping the doorframe.

For the second time that night, I had no idea what was happening. As soon as the owner of the hand, a white figure, entered the room, I saw a black blur flying through the room and straight at the figure, shoving them backwards and out of the room, and then I heard a cry.

I didn’t realize that I hadn’t been breathing until I took a sharp intake of breath that refilled my lungs with air. My hand was still clutched against my chest, and I couldn’t bring myself over back to the doorway to see what the hell was going on. All I heard were grunts and more sounds of struggle between the two of them, then more barking from whatever dog-like creature had attacked Gilliam but it was quickly followed by a weak whimper. Out of instinct I pulled my weapon out just in case, then pointed it at the doorway when all of a sudden, two figures rushed into the room and slammed themselves against the back wall, but before I could take a good look at the two of them, the fight re-ensued, and before I knew it, an object was flung straight at my direction, sliding through the floor before it rested right beside my feet.

A bloody kitchen knife.

When I turned back to them, they were both on the ground behind the table and out of my sight. Gilliam rushed back in the room, his hair all over the place and his clothes had bits and pieces ripped and torn from them, with his tie bitten in half, taking deep breaths, pointing his gun straight at the two unknown figures on the floor. I didn’t even take the time to question what happened as I went straight to his side, turning to point my weapon at them as well, and then I realized who it was.

The intruder laughed.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said, his cackling laugh a reflection of how insane the boy had become. “Really, Jack? After all I’ve done for you, you’re gonna repay me like this?”

Jack had his scalpel held up against the other boy’s throat, with his back turned to us so I couldn’t see the expression on his face as he scoffed. “What the fuck are you doing here anyway?”

“Rescuing your sorry ass out of here, you fucking prick! And now you’re siding with the cops now—are you fucking kidding me with this bullshit?”

Jack froze, then after a few seconds he stood up, but kept a single boot on the other man’s chest, and it was enough to allow us to see the intruder in full view.

Just like the picture in his criminal record, his skin had been bleached paper-white, his shoulder-length hair all over the place and charred tar-black, and his clothes, which consisted of a white hooded jacket, black pants and sneakers, were stained with splotches of blood, some fresh and some faded. His face was the most horrifying, distinctive feature of all; his eyes were wide open, and little charred bits of what used to be his eyelids made a reddish-black ring around them. And his smile—a spine-chilling smile, cut into his cheeks and making long scars on either sides of his face, tainted with blood.

“I’m not ‘siding’ with anyone,” Jack continued, growling at the young man who he once considered an ally.

“You are aware that man behind you is from the Foundation, right?”

I held my breath as soon as I heard growling appear right behind me. Jack, however, didn’t seem fazed at all.

“Sit, boy.”

The growling intensified, then Jack turned around, glaring at whatever creature standing right behind us.

“Smile,” he repeated, with more force this time. “I said, _sit_.”

The growling stopped, and the creature huffed out an agitated breath.

Jeff shook his head. “What kind of fucking deal did they made with you, huh? They’re _lying_ to you, Jack—you know better than this. The Foundation is worse than all of us Creeps combined, and you know you can’t trust a single fucking word they say.”

“There is no ‘deal’,” Jack scoffed. “You’ve heard of the killings, right?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re actually taking responsible for it—”

“They arrested both Skye and Toby. You know there’s no way I’ll let the Foundation take them away—”

“Oh, here we go again,” Jeff whined, rolling his eyes. “It’s Skye-this, and Toby-that. Your fucking girlfriend has more issues than you, you piece of shit—and you’re a _literal fucking demon_. Don’t you have enough on your plate already? And now you’re taking it up upon yourself to actually take _care_ of those little pricks.”

“Says the guy who says he doesn’t care about anyone, yet breaks into a police station to rescue me like some prince in shining armor.”

“Wha—you know me! I was bored, so I thought this’ll be something fun to do for once. It’s not like I have anything much on my plate.”

“Really? Then tell me—how’s Jane doing, Jeff?”

This shut the smiling killer up. Though his scars were turned up to form the grin, his mouth were curved down to a frown. “Fuck off.”

“Nope.” Jack shook his head adamantly. “You came here to help me, right? Well, lucky for you, I do need your help.”

“I don’t _want_ to fucking help anyone, you prick!”

“Well, then good luck dealing with the Foundation yourself.” The cannibal then turned to Gilliam. “You want all three of us alive, right?”

“It’s my job.”

“Then I’m proposing a deal,” Jack continued. “Remember: you may be part of the Foundation, but without the rest of your team or anything like that, you are nothing. Detective Bishop, I do not wish to hurt you and I want to leave you out of this, therefore I advise you hear me out or there will be a problem between us.” He paused for a short moment. “Just like before. I’ll go with you willingly—I will surrender myself to the Foundation, but _only_ after you let me look for Skye and Toby.”

_Or he kills all of us right here, right now,_ I thought to myself, knowing that was the other conclusion to this new deal he made with us. And just like before, I would be willing to accept it without hesitation since, as a human, I still had semblance of self-preservation, unlike Gilliam.

Not to mention the fact that he would have a helping hand in finishing the two of us off—Jeff the Killer himself, and whatever creature that attacked Gilliam that first time. The forever-smiling young man himself was glaring at us, and something seemed to have reignited in his eyes as soon as he heard Jack’s words, and I could’ve sworn his smile had turned up even wider, as though he was already imagining himself driving that kitchen knife straight through our bodies, if we didn’t agree to Jack’s terms. I wouldn’t doubt that the cannibal would lift his boot of his friend if it came to that.

But thankfully, Gilliam, too, had some self-preservation motivation inside of him; his frown turned into a scowl, but he lowered his weapon.

“This will be the last time I agree to your terms, Eyeless Jack,” he snapped, narrowing his eyes at them.

Jack, on the other hand, smirked at Gilliam’s defeat. “I thought so.” Then he turned back to Jeff. “And Jeff. You know I can hand you over to these people right away, right? Or—oh, I don’t know, but I think a certain somebody has a certain vendetta against you after you killed her parents and scarred her for life, and I just so happen to be in rather good terms with her—Skye has invited her over to our place sometimes, too, so there’s that. I mean, it’s completely up to you.”

“So, this is how it’s gonna be, huh?” Jeff tilted his head to the side, then scoffed. “And to think, I willingly _helped_ you back then, you ungrateful bastard. And now you have to _threaten_ me to get me to work with you?”

“Well, I know you well enough to know that you won’t otherwise. I mean, you’ve been complaining all this time about how I’ve gone soft over the years. And if blackmail isn’t enough for you, then I can think of worse things I can do to you—need I remind you of all the fun little toys I have in my basement? So don’t go on thinking I’ve gone too soft now. I’m a Creep, aren’t I?”

I hoped he was bluffing. God, I hoped he was bluffing about that bit about the basement; just thinking about it gave me goosebumps.

Jeff seemed to be considering it for a moment, his gaze locking with Jack’s. “You know that not even any of the other Creeps can get to wherever it is the Tall Man took them, right?”

“And your point is?”

“Are you out of your fucking mind? Well, what do you need _me_ for, then?”

“Slashing the throats of anybody who tries to stand in our way,” Jack said, shrugging, as though it was something normal to say, like questioning the weather or something. “You know, proxies. The little ones—those little meatbags serving _him_.”

“And both of the people you’re trying to organize this suicide rescue mission for used to be part of them—hell, they might be working for the Tall Man right now, goddammit!”

“Well, as long as it’s not either of them, I don’t give a fuck about who you kill.” After another short pause, he then added, “And for the question of how we’re going to get there, I know a guy who might know how.”

 

***

 

She was awake.

Her eyelids snapped open and she found herself staring straight into nothing but blackness.

She was awake, and that was not a good sign.

She was breathing, her lips parted open to let air into her lungs. It was strange to be able to breathe again, but even so, every breath she took brought in air that burned down her windpipe, leaving a burnt and somewhat pungent smell lingering in her nostrils, like she was inhaling ammonia instead of oxygen.

This shouldn’t be what it felt like, right? The air in the physical realm was fresh, and nice, and sometimes with a little bit of smog but it wasn’t _pungent_. It was at least breathable.

Then she blinked. She began to readjust herself to physical senses—audio and touch, to be more specific. She felt something hard against her back, and a rough surface beneath her fingertips, and nothing more other than the slight breeze against her skin, a sensation she hadn’t felt in a long, long while. She heard sounds in the distance—voices, indistinct but seemingly human. There was constant static in the back of her mind but nothing she couldn’t handle—she’s been living with it most of her life, had it linger there every single time she woke up.

Most of all, she could hear—she could _feel_ —her own heartbeat pounding against her chest. It made her feel alive again—alive even when she was supposed to be dead.

Why was she here? Why was she awake? What had awoken her now?

Her finger twitched. She had full control of the body now, whether she liked it or not, and she doubted that she’d lost control of it any time soon. She let herself adapt, and once she considered herself ready, she sat up, but gasped as soon as she saw what was before her, and realized where she was.

The Ark.

The distorted sight, like a terrible, low-resolution video filled with noise and film grains, and the contrast having been kicked up a notch. She was sure this wasn’t just something wrong with her eyes—or, rather, the eyes that belonged to the true owner of this body. It was looking straight into an old television, and no matter how many times she blinked, it wouldn’t go away.

And yet, the scenery before her seemed normal, almost familiar even. It was an average suburban neighborhood, with two opposite-facing rows of detached, two-story houses, a few empty cars parked along the street, and the street lamps being the sole sources of illumination out here in the middle of the night, with the lack of a natural moon or light source in a hellish place like this. She could even hear the sound of a dog barking in the distance, though she doubted that it was a friendly animal at all, knowing what sort of creatures roamed here.

How in the hell did she end up here? Out of all places?

She stood still, staring into nothingness, trying to search through the brain this physical body granted her—recall the memories of another, memories that didn’t belong to her. And yet, she couldn’t find a single thing that could answer the questions lingering in her mind—in fact, she couldn’t find anything at all. It felt like the first time she did this—that horrible first time she possessed this body and acted as if it were her own, even though she knew full well that with her presence there, she was putting more torture into the true owner of this physical vessel.

Skye. The girl she shouldn’t care about. The girl that should’ve been dead a long time ago, if _she_ didn’t have anything to do with it.

It was a good thing she did do something, though. She was tired of living like this—tired of serving with unwavering but blinding loyalty. She was tired of tormenting others, even more so tormenting Skylar by being in this body alone, let alone being the one taking the helm. Too many lives, human or not, were lost during her time in service with the Collective; and she shouldn’t care much for it, if she hadn’t gained that little bit of free will—that shred of compassion—that made her realize how precious humans were, regardless of how pathetic they were.

Still, she shouldn’t head straight for the sentimentalities right away, especially not at a time like this. There was a reason she was awake—a reason she was here. Being in this strange realm itself would be enough explanation as to why she was awake, but how did she get here in the first place?

She was about to lift a hand when she realized she was holding something in it this entire time—or, rather, _Skye_ had been holding in it this entire time. She looked down and opened her palm: it was the pill bottle, with orange-tinted exterior and the white pills inside, but it was half empty.

She swallowed hard. Those pills were the reason she felt much weaker than she was the last time she was awake, and the reason she had been asleep this whole time. Suppressed, like the parasitic illness that she was. It kept the Keeper away from them, sure, but because of her unfortunate origins that was from that vile entity itself, it kept _her_ away as well.

It weakened her, with every single pill she took, but what troubled her more was the fact that it didn’t put them out of their respective miseries for good. She wished it did. It was a suicidal thought, and for entities like them, suicide wasn’t a question because there was no way that they could die, but she wanted to.

She often wondered what it felt like to be truly free. And she was going to fight for it, to get at least a taste of that feeling of true freedom. Cutting ties from the Collective itself wasn’t freedom—not when she was still alive, still existing.

Still present, and still in this body.

She doubted there was even a way, though. As long as the iterations continued, and as long as the cycle repeated itself, there wasn’t a way out of it. In multiple timelines, Skye would be dragged into this mess regardless of what either of them did, along with her friends and allies as well—she knew because she’s seen all of them.

She could’ve altered the past, just like what Firebrand did. But in her eyes, Firebrand was reckless, and his vessel, Noah Maxwell, was no different. Time manipulation was no petty thing, and there were enough alternate universes existing as we speak. She didn’t want to mess up the timeline even more than it already was, especially after seeing all the thing Firebrand did—the lengths he went through to save Noah. But then again, at least Noah didn’t have to switch between two personalities living inside him on a constant basis, or have to consume pills for the sake of keeping the switching under control.

_Enough regrets_ , she finally said to herself, taking another deep breath as she began to walk down the street, heading towards nowhere. _Time to get things done._

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—well, compared to the very definition of ‘ordinary’ itself in a place like this. She couldn’t feel the presence of the Keeper nearby, which was a good sign, nor the presence of other Collective members as well. Not even Firebrand. That was also a good sign, but also made her worry because at least the latter might have answers, seeing how he’s been playing puppet master in recent years.

Though, she knew of _one_ entity that might still be lurking nearby, and she wasn’t sure if where she was was part of _his_ domain or the Keeper’s domain. Either way, it wasn’t good news to her, but if she was in the Keeper’s domain, then she’ll at least have much more power over what goes on and what goes down.

She had a feeling, however, that she was going to find out soon enough.

“Run!”

A voice, in the far distance, coming from west of where she was facing. She froze at where she stood. Through the buzzing in her ears, she could hear more than just yelling—she heard footsteps. Rushed, heavy footsteps, perhaps belonging to an adult male, perhaps two of them, even. They were heading towards her direction.

“He’s coming! C’mon, what are you doing?”

She bent down to reach her shoe, and pulled out the hidden pocket knife before flipping it open, revealing the blade as it reflected the light from the nearby street lamp. The voice sounded benevolent, but she wasn’t going to take any chances—the best façades hid the worst secrets, after all. Of course, she of all people should know that.

She then silently made her way over to the corner of the intersection, before she leaned her back against the brick wall behind her. The footsteps were coming closer, and so were the voices.

“We have to split up. He won’t be able to catch us that way.”

“At a time like this? You’re kidding, right?”

“We’ll just meet up back at the safehouse, like we always do.”

“You know that one of these days, he’s going to find where the safehouse is, right?”

“It’s in the Operator’s territory. He’s never going to look there.”

“This entire realm is pretty much his territory now. Haven’t you noticed? He doesn’t give a fuck about it anymore. Why’d you think he killed me?”

She swallowed hard. One of the voices sounded familiar—a bit too familiar, in fact, but for the sake of herself, she couldn’t pinpoint who it belonged to, other than knowing full well that both were male. She’d been missing far too much, after spending too much time being under, and it was going to take her some time again to make herself used to being awake again.

“We don’t have any other choice. There’s just one of him, and four of _us_.”

“Five.”

“Right—yeah, whatever. But again, there’s only one of him. He can’t possibly split himself into five and chase us all down, right?”

A sigh. “Fine.”

“Cool. I’ll meet you guys back there, all right?”

The footsteps were divided. She heard some heading north, but there were still some heading this way, though whoever it was, he wasn’t running again. He was speed-walking, if anything. Almost like he was being cautious about where he stepped, like he knew he was being stalked by someone and was afraid he was going to get caught.

She had an idea of who might be after them, here in the Ark. It was the same entity she hoped she wouldn’t meet during the time she’d be spending in here, trying to find a way out.

She waited patiently, waiting until the footsteps grew nearer and nearer, until finally, they were just feet away from turning around the corner where she waited. She expected the worst, tightened her grip on the knife, and waited until the very last step.

Then, she sprung out from where she was and raised the knife above her head.

“Wait, wait, wait—stop!”

She froze. Her eyes went up, and she almost dropped the knife straight away.

He gasped.

“Skye? Is that really you?”

She did a double-take, blinking, and in the back of her head, she could hear Skye’s own gasp.

“Tim?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A twisted turn of events when meeting their supposed ally leads Bishop, Gilliam and the two killers to agree to another arrangement, one that might not end well for either of them. In the other world, a brief but long-awaited reunion takes place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REMINDER: This is a work of pure FICTION, including all Slenderverse ARGs, creepypastas and any SCP-related content. The creators of such works of fiction, e.g. the former THAC crew, and TribeTwelve's and EMH's cast and creators are all real people, whereas their in-game characters, e.g. the MH crew, Noah Maxwell, the Collective, HABIT, the Operator/the Administrator/Slenderman, etc. are fictional. They do not exist in real life, nor will they ever will.
> 
> Keep this in mind as you read this chapter because the things I have written in this story are purely for plot-driving purposes. None of what I have written is true nor a portrayal of real-life events. I have read cases about delusional people thinking that the Slenderman is real, even more so due to the nature of the ARGs, but they're fictional, and so are the events of this story, so don't go running to me with some weird-ass theory just because of what I wrote here, all right? Cool? Okay.

“Don’t you have anything better to do, Detective?”

When I shook my head, he sighed. “This isn’t part of the case—you know that, right?”

“I am fully aware of that, yes.” I glanced out the window. “I just… I feel bad for them, and it’s my job as a law enforcement officer to protect those who are in danger.”

“It’s not something you can prevent, Detective. And the deeper you involve yourself in, the more entangled in the web you will be. You realize that, right?”

“I’ve been warned that multiple times since I first met you guys.” I paused to take a deep breath. “But I can’t rest until the matter is settled. I don’t rest until my case is closed.”

“Your case never existed in the first place.”

“Damn right.” I set my lips on a hard line as soon as Jeff started to chime in. “We didn’t do shit, lady. I was either passed out drunk or in the middle of a fight with one of the others. Or maybe playing video games with Ben—little shit thinks he can cheat just because he’s a cyber ghost and all, but not on my watch.”

I didn’t want to think about it. Last I read about it, the boy was thirteen when he went missing—and he didn’t look like he aged a single day past that age. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know what kind of place invited kids like him to get drunk and into bar fights. Kids these days.

I turned to look over my shoulder, through the metal grating that separated the car in half, at the two serial killers taking up spots in the back seat. Though their weapons were confiscated from them, Jack’s hands were free to move but Jeff’s weren’t—regardless of the deal they made, Gilliam didn’t quite trust the boy just yet, and from what I’ve heard, I didn’t blame him. Even Jack himself refused to remove his foot off of his former partner until we made sure the latter wouldn’t do anything stupid once he did.

It was the morning after the night I would never forget, and I wished, more than anything, that I’d used that phrase for a memory that was much more pleasant than what it was. The two of them were kept in holding cells until dawn broke, and I got to the station before anyone could, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want any of the others to start freaking out about who’d they find in the holding cells if they wandered over to that area out of sheer curiosity.

I couldn’t get a wink of sleep last night. Instead, I brewed some coffee, reviewed the case files for _everything_ —including those from up to four years ago, when everything went to shit for them. Three hours later, I packed everything up with me and headed back to the station. Even Gilliam, who arrived an hour after me, took notice of how sleep-deprived I was, though I couldn’t say he was in an any better state.

When we got them both out of the cells, Jack told us to drive to south, about a couple towns over—it was a few hours’ worth of driving, but it was the location of the person who Jack said could help us—Noah Maxwell, whom I recalled him mentioning at some point during our interrogation the previous day. He also mentioned that, like Tim, he had his own video logs uploaded online that detailed events that led up to this point—almost every single encounter he had with the Operator itself.

When I asked Gilliam how come he hadn’t arrested this man yet, his expression turned grim.

“Because whatever _thing_ that should be possessing him, isn’t,” he said. “It’s keeping him hidden, wanting to keep his vessel away from the Operator’s grasps, and by extension, from us as well.”

I frowned, turning back to Jack. “So, how do you came to know him and where he is?”

“Because the ‘thing’ that’s supposed to be possessing him—Firebrand—has contacted us before,” the young man replied, crossing his arms in front of him as he cast a sideways glance at Jeff, who didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the conversation anymore. “He wanted our help—and I don’t blame him, because we’re all going to need all the help we can get. Thing is, Siren thinks his methods are rather… _unorthodox_ , to say the least.”

“How?”

He paused for some thought before answering. “He’s asking others for help—‘others’, as in, outsiders. People unrelated to this… problem. Public society. Granted, there are also others who do the same thing because humans are humans, but that’s the problem; that’s what the Operator wants us to do. He wants _us_ to spread this… this… _disease—_ his _influence_ —to others. I think it has something to do with fueling his power or something, but the more people believe it’s true, the more powerful he becomes.”

I swallowed hard. _And I think I’ve just made matters worse._

“But…” He sighed. “We’ve made a compromise. The people he asks to help them—help _us_ —for as far as I know, have no idea all of this is real. I think they still think it’s some sort of game. A fictional narrative, that goes on and on and doesn't end—it never ends. I suppose that’s a good thing—keeps the Operator from getting too powerful too quickly.”

“But we’re all fucked either way.” Jeff had begun to speak up again, mumbling like an insolent child. “That’s why I don’t see what the point of you guys ‘running’ is. It’s not like you can stop him, right? It’s not like _any_ of us can stop him.”

“Well, I'd rather stay alive than be dead, thank you very much.”

We didn’t stop right in front of a house, however, as I’d expected we would be. Jack had us stop right in the parking lot of a small park in the middle of a decent neighborhood, in quite an open area, with a little playground where a couple of kids ran around, hopping on and off the slides, being the innocent little humans they were. There were a few adults standing around, making sure none of the kids got into any trouble, but they seemed oblivious enough to our presence here, underneath the shade of a large tree in the sidelines.

In fact, it seemed that none of them seem to look even remotely like the person we were supposed to meet. _Maybe he’s hiding in plain sight,_ I first thought, but after another glance around and taking a look at all the people present in the park, they all seemed… ordinary.

“He’ll meet us here,” Jack said as he took a look at our surroundings as well, with Gilliam merely responding with a quiet grunt; Jack must’ve not wanted to expose his friend’s location to Gilliam, and I had no doubt that the latter wasn’t too pleased with it.

Just then, we suddenly heard buzzing coming from inside the car, and I turned around in my seat to see Jack pulling out his phone. I watched as his expression turned from confusion, slowly to one of concern.

“What is it?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“He’s not coming,” he said with a huff of breath, then turned his phone around for us to see.

It was a text message, sent by an unknown number, containing just two sentences.

‘They are lost but can be found. What you seek is not where you should be. ~ F’

“What in the world—”

“It’s from Firebrand,” Jack sighed before I even finished asking, pulling the phone back to his view. He then began typing something on the phone, dialing someone as he brought the phone to his ears, but within a few seconds, he brought it back down. “Noah’s not answering his phone. I’m guessing that little friend of his is doesn’t like us having arranged this little meet-up. Might be ‘cause he wants him to keep him hidden away—maybe from you.”

His gaze was directed straight at Gilliam, his face contorting to form a slight scowl, but he turned away before I could say anything, putting the car back on drive and pulling away from the parking spot. In the backseat, Jeff snorted a chuckle.

“So, what now?” I asked, turning back to the cannibal, who seemed even further deep in thought. "Is this a dead end, then?”

“He said that they _can_ be found.” He paused, staring at the brightened screen with his hollow eye-sockets. “Is he implying they might be somewhere else?”

I frowned. “Where else could the Operator have taken them?”

“I’m not sure—”

“You know, there’s another option you haven’t considered, idiot.”

Heads turned to Jeff, whose eyes were clouded with mischief but he sent his former colleague a knowing gaze. Jack returned it with confusion at first, then realization, then anger.

“No.” The demonic side of him wasn’t showing just yet, but he sounded pissed off enough. “No. There’s no way in hell I’m going back in there, Jeff.”

“Not even for that _girlfriend_ of yours?” the smiling man retorted back with a mocking voice, the scars on either side of his mouth stretching even further like a Cheshire cat’s, making him seem more sinister than he already was. Jack said nothing but scowled at his comrade. “Aw, poor little Jacky-boy is scared of heading back down into the little rabbit hole, doesn’t he? I told you—you can’t run away from what you are, Jacky-boy. You’re a monster, through and through, just like the rest of us. None of what you’ve done these past months that you’ve abandoned me changed that fact at all.”

“But you know what that place does to me.”

“So what?” His smile had faltered, and for the very first time, I saw Jeff the Killer angry, and I was beyond terrified. “You’re desperate enough to let _me_ tag along even though you hate my guts—and yes, that much is obvious but I don’t give a fuck about it ‘cause _everybody_ hates my guts. If you're really that persistent in trying to find those little human friends of yours, then don’t be a fucking pussy—you’re Eyeless Jack, goddammit. You’re a motherfucking cannibal who eats raw human kidneys for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Start _acting_ like it.”

The silence in the car was deafening. Even Gilliam didn’t dare to glance over his shoulder at the two arguing killers in the back, and I was terrified that uttering a single word would flip the car upside down, knowing full well the two were on the verge of their worst moods possible. It was a good thing that their beloved weapons had been confiscated away from them, otherwise blood would be spilled.

But Jack was just as silent as us humans were, his jaw tense than ever and, though hidden in shadows, I could see his gloved hands curled into fists once more, to the point that his phone could’ve snapped half at any time then.

Then his muscles relaxed, and he began to speak again.

“Do you even _know_ how the fuck are we supposed to get there?”

“Smile can get there wherever and whenever he wants to,” Jeff suggested, but Jack shook his head.

“He’s a _dog_. You and I together is at least thrice the size of him.”

“Wait.” They turned to me as soon as I uttered that word, and I found myself regretted having said anything in the first place. “You two are going alone there? What about us?”

“What _about_ you?” Jeff began, and was about to retort back with something much more aggressive when Jack cut him off, holding out a hand to hold him back before the former could do anything.

“You’re not coming with us,” the cannibal said, in a much calmer tone than his friend’s, a grave look casting over his ashen, eyeless face. “It’s too dangerous.”

“And I have dedicated my life to dealing with freaks like you, and more.” Gilliam’s voice came from where he sat beside me, but his eyes were focused straight on the road, heading towards what I could assume was back home—back to the office.

Jack scoffed. “I thought the Foundation always send the expendables to deal with anomalies like those. I mean, I won’t be surprised if you’re one of them.”

Then Jeff added, “Do you even know what the fuck we're talking about?”

“The Ark,” Gilliam replied with confidence, and the other two seemed surprised. “A world beyond our own, where reality doesn’t exist. I know more than you think.”

“Not enough, apparently,” Jack insisted still. “Regardless of your knowledge of it, I refuse to allow any more innocents—as innocent as you may be—into the Operator’s domain, or worse.”

“Look.” I had started massaging my forehead before I turned back to them. “Both of us have a job to do, and that is to protect, isn’t that right?”

I glared at Gilliam, but when no response came from him right way, I’d thought he wasn’t even going to acknowledge me, but just as I was about to continue, he cut me off.

“Above all else,” he said. “Secure, contain, protect. It is the Foundation’s motto for a reason.”

“And that means we have to go with you guys in there.”

“Not a chance,” Jack insisted regardless, and I pursed my lips.

“Look, boy,” Gilliam spoke up again, maintaining his composure. “We’re flattered you’re concerned about our well-being, but—”

“And I honestly can’t care less about your well-being.” This shut us both up, as Jack leaned back against his seat. “The thing about letting you humans enter that shithole is that you’ll be stuck here, forever like the rest of us are. And the more people that are stuck in there—”

“The more powerful the Operator becomes.”

I switched my gaze to Gilliam as silence fell upon the inside of the car, leaving just a slight humming noise coming from the engine then a car honk from someone behind us. Gilliam grunted in response, shot a glare at the rearview mirror before he pulled over the car to the side of the curb, in front of a closed abandoned shop.

“So you’re not _too_ much of an idiot, huh?” Jeff mused, and Jack rolled his eyes.

“But if that does not mean anything to you, in other words, it means you will end up with a fate far worse than death. Hell, even far worse than the ones the rest of us ended up with.”

I cocked a curious eyebrow. “Us?”

“Yeah, you know—the other Creeps,” Jeff answered nonchalantly, leaning back against the car seat. “C’mon—you guys know we aren’t the only ones, right? I’m sure Reject James Bond over here knows a couple.”

I turned to Gilliam, who seemed displeased with the nickname Jeff had assigned to him, but ignored it nonetheless as he shifted the gears back to parking and turned to address the rest of us.

“Jeff and I will go there alone,” Jack insisted, and his voice showed no signs of tolerance if we disagreed—it was either his way or none at all. The boy had quite a knack for arranging one-sided agreements between us. “When we find out where we can get there, we’ll tell you how, but we expect to encounter none of you outsiders in there, unless you want to come back here to the real world with everlasting nightmares or if you want a scalpel shoved down your throat for convenience’s sake. Believe me when I say that’s a much more merciful death than following us in there.”

I swallowed hard. He wasn’t playing around.

“Then?” Gilliam questioned, staring at them with an unreadable expression.

“I find Skye and Toby,” the eyeless man continued, “and if we’re lucky enough, we get the hell out of there before it’s too late. As per our agreement, I will surrender myself to the Foundation with no further complications, as long as the two of them gets to walk out of here with a clean slate.”

Gilliam burrowed his brow. “I thought I was promised two killers.”

Despite his burnt-off eyelids, I didn’t expect to see Jeff’s eyes going wider than they already were as soon as he heard this. “Wait, what? No, that’s bullshit—I didn’t agree to shit, man!”

“That’s right,” Jack replied right after, much to my own surprise. “But whatever happens to this retarded asshole right here is out of my hands. We’ll see how the situation is once this is all over.”

“You sonofabitch—”

“I have both Jane’s and Liu’s numbers on speed-dial.”

“—fucking piece of shit.” And with that, Jeff sank back to his seat with crossed arms, his head turned towards the window.

I raised both my eyebrows at their antics, but Gilliam was far from amused, wearing a scowl on his face as always. “How do I know you will keep your word?”

“Because despite all of this, I still have some sense of dignity with me.” Then Jack cocked his head towards the grumbling boy in the corner of the car. “Unlike him. A deal is a deal, and I keep my word.”

My partner’s gaze hardened, tension evident in his jaw, so much that I was afraid he was going to break his own teeth. It was a choice of duty over life and death for him, and I understood that. I have had to make such a decision in the past myself.

“I mean, you _could_ come with us,” Jeff mumbled from where he sat, his initial childish pout turning up to form a smirk with obvious malice. “But this bastard sitting beside me has a point for once since I first goddamn met him. If there’s anything I hate more than my own brother and Jane, it’s the Tall Man and his little goons. I’d hate to lose the honors of decapitating you guys to that faceless bastard.”

 _Even Jeff hates the Operator,_ I thought grimly, sparing no surprise, but couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of his last few words.

Then finally, after another minute of thought, Gilliam breathed out a heavy sigh. “Three days,” he blurted out, staring at the two of them. “Three days before I have my men track you down and retrieve all four of you myself.”

“Three days won’t be enough—”

“Secure, contain, _protect_ ,” Gilliam interrupted before Jack could further his protests, as he turned his head back to the front and shifted the gear back to drive. “Do not think that the Foundation wants to be against all of you—we are all well-aware of what the Operator can do, and you might think we are containing you for the sake of the rest of humankind. My orders from my superiors are to _protect_ above all else, and that means to all four of you as well.”

Jack let out a condescending scoff and Jeff rolled his eyes, but Gilliam ignored it.

“Believe my words as you will, but if what you are saying is true, then the Operator might still be after them, and the two of you as well. You may question our methods, but it is the best we have against an omnipotent being with infinite powers over reality itself. Either those will be the terms of our agreement, or I will be forced to do things my way. You do want to find your friends, am I correct?”

Jack gave no protests. His gaze was locked with Gilliam’s, and even without eyes I could see the contempt the former had for my partner, but his lack of objections told us of his silent agreement.

“And I take it that I am supposed to just sit back in the office and do nothing?” I found myself questioning as I sat back properly in my own seat, strapping the seat belt back on. I could feel their gazes now directed towards me, and it still unnerved me even after all this time.

“You have a case to solve, right?” said Gilliam, a hint of a smirk appearing on his face. “These two testified that neither of them was the culprit. It looks like you have some more investigative work to do.”

This time, I glared at him until he added, “Don’t worry. It’s my case, too. And believe me, I want this to end quickly just as much as you do.”

“Why? Because I’m unbearable, or is it because you want to turn me over to this Foundation you work for so you can erase my memories about all of this as soon as possible?”

“Well, we haven’t used the memory-eraser for quite some time—I think it needs a bit of warming-up first.”

God, I hoped he was joking.

* * *

 

She didn’t know what to expect. All of a sudden, his confused expression turned to relief in a split second, but just as he took a step forward, she took one step back.

“I am not Skye,” she said, her voice quieter than she’d intended. She hung her head, her gaze darting downwards. “She is not here right now.”

Confusion overtook the man’s face before it morphed into understanding. “Oh. Right—I forgot what this place does to people like you—like _her_ , I mean.”

Even so, there was some relief starting to flood inside her own chest, though she wasn’t sure if it was because some part of her other was still awake, or because it was out of her own accord.

Despite the months that had passed—and the months she spent asleep—the man didn’t look a day older than the last time she saw him. He still retained the short beard he’d grown for himself and his hair, in her own opinion, needed a little trim. He’d gained a few more scratches and cuts since the day he died, however, and she would be lying if she’d said it didn’t make her worry just the slightest bit, though it might’ve been because of the concern Skye would’ve held for him—definitely not from herself.

“Wait.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “If Skye isn’t dead, then what the hell are you doing in here?”

“That is what I am trying to find out,” she replied, a dark shadow casting over her face. “Believe me when I say I hate it being in here, just as much as you do.”

“No—but what are you doing _here_ , in HABIT’s territory? Do you have any idea how much danger you’re in by just being here?”

She pressed her lips to a thin line. _So I was not mistaken._ “I just woke up. I did not even know what happened before I— _we_ wound up in this place. Skye has been taking her daily dose of the pills, as you’ve told them to. I would know.” Because of what it did to her.

“Well, that’s one relief, but not necessarily too helpful right now.” He looked away, running a hand through his hair as he glanced around. “C’mon, we can’t talk here. HABIT’s close by, and he isn’t in his best moods right now.”

“What did you do?”

He had started walking again, heading to cross the road and walk further down the street in the direction he was going before she tried to attack him. She stashed her knife away but kept it in her palm just in case, before she started to follow the rugged man, maintaining a good distance from him.

“Honestly, I have no idea,” he said with an agitated tone. “If he isn’t out there in the real world, he’s here, hunting all five of us down like we’re rabbits or something.” Rabbits. She almost scoffed. _How convenient._ “I think it has something to do with that grudge he has against you-know-who.”

 _Everything_ always had something to do with the animosity between those two, and it wasn’t like HABIT kept it a secret amongst the rest of them, too. But then the realization dawned upon her as she tilted her head to the side and questioned, “Five of you?”

“Yeah.” He kept on walking, with occasional glances around as if he was terrified the malevolent entity hunting them down would appear out of nowhere right next to them. In fact, that could very well happen, for all she knew. After all, he was in control around these parts. “All of my old friends are down here with me—well, not all of them, and I wouldn’t exactly call them all ‘ _friends’_ what happened. Brian’s here, and Jay, and even Alex out of all the goddamn people in the world. But hey, at least he’s sane now, and he’s made it clear he regrets having tried to kill us, seeing we all ended up here out of all places. Hell, even the SCP facility site was a whole lot better than this piece of shit.”

She remembered those names. Even after all this time being asleep. They were subjects of interest for the Administrator, and ironically enough, it all started from the man walking a few feet in front of her himself. She could sense the guilt in his voice as he spoke of his dear friends.

Still, even in her eyes, it wasn’t his fault they ended up here. It was the Administrator’s—and it just gave her even more of a reason to defy her former master.

“Oh, and there’s one more guy, too—he says his name is Jeff, but I don’t think he’s the same Jeff that Jack told us about the other day.”

She flinched again, but didn’t say anything, allowing him to continue.

“He told us his friends are still alive out there in the real world. Thing is, HABIT’s possessing one of them, so trying to look for that one in particular is out of the question. That Jeff guy also said he wanted to look for his possibly dead brother and another one of his friends, but I think keeping ourselves as far away as possible from HABIT should be our main objective right now.”

She nodded without reply, because if she did, she was afraid she might accidentally reveal too much to him. It wasn’t because she wanted to leave her once-living ally in the dark, not at all—knowing the importance of those people, however, was going to overcomplicate things, and she knew Tim had more than enough on his plate already. In fact, none of them might even be aware of what their purpose here was—what they were doing in a place like this, or how they wound up here, instead of wherever dead souls wandered to once their time in the mortal realm was up.

 _Freedom_ , she assumed. _True_ freedom—the freedom she sought, but could never obtain.

This—this was purgatory. Perhaps not the ‘hell’ that humans often described about, but close enough. In fact, maybe this _was_ Hell. After all, how would she ever be able to tell the difference?

“How are they?”

The question caught her off-guard. She almost stopped dead in her tracks, but she quickly turned her gaze towards him.

“Fine, as far as I know.” She looked down, wrapping her arms around herself. Perhaps the sight of a familiar face had woken Skye up a little more than before—at least now, she could access the girl’s memories prior to this, though not all. “A little trouble with the law enforcements, however.”

“The cops?” He sounded surprised. He had every right to be. “What the hell did they do now?”

“A murder investigation,” she replied, swallowing hard and closing her eyes. “Jack was involved.”

“Jack?” He sighed. “I mean, I’ve heard about what he’s done. I thought he was done with that sort of thing.”

She took a brief moment of pause and a deep breath. “He didn’t do it, but the police seem to think otherwise. At least, Skye _believed_ it wasn’t him.” Another pause, then, “She thinks the Foundation is involved.”

Upon hearing this, he stopped and stood still for a solid second, and she watched his shoulders fall. “Shit, those guys again. Adamant sons of bitches, aren’t they?”

“They have no idea what they are getting themselves into,” she replied, agreeing with the man. “And to think, maybe humans would learn from their past mistakes.”

“Hey, leave the rest of humanity out of this,” Tim said with a somewhat lighthearted tone, glancing over his shoulder at her for just a moment before his expression fell apart. “I don’t think those SCP guys are even human anymore. I can’t believe I even trusted them in the first place.”

She raised an eyebrow at this. Skye’s memories weren’t wrong; the first time they met him, he didn’t even want to talk to any of them. They were placed in the cell adjacent to his, and she recognized him the instant she saw him—she knew about most of the Administrator’s targets, and he was one of the most notable ones, having been the only one who actively resisted the Administrator’s influence on him with those pills. She didn’t say anything to him at first, and he didn’t seem to be interested in starting a conversation either; it was after Skye was brought back from the realm of subconsciousness that she tried to talk to him, and then Skye found out about who he was.

For all she remembered, Tim was being uncooperative at first—he wanted nothing more to do with the Administrator, since it cost him most of his childhood and then the lives of the few close friends he managed to gain. He’d willingly given himself up to the Foundation, thinking they were a legitimate government organization at first—which they technically were—after they promised him they could help him.

The Timothy Wright she was seeing right in front of her now was a different person—much different since she last remembered. He must’ve really grown to care for the others. Maybe it’s because they’re the only people he had left—people whose problems weren’t caused by him and him alone.

People who, in fact, shared their problems with him. People he could overcome his own problems with.

She wished she could experience that feeling herself—belonging. Even in the Collective, she never felt like she belonged with them. Not that she could feel much at all. All she remembered about being there was just cold, empty numbness. She was just another soldier, another expendable drone. She was one among many. The others—they weren’t what she could consider family. They weren’t even her friends. They were just other mindless soldiers.

She sighed. Having some semblance of humanity… it made things more difficult. She was no longer as _efficient_ as she could be—as she should be, especially at this time. She couldn’t do things that she used to be able to. She couldn’t even teleport herself out of here—it might be one of the side-effects from those pills, but regardless of the cause, it meant that she had to find another way out of here.

She wondered if there even was one.

“So.” Her eyes looked up as soon as she heard him speak again. “Where are the others?”

Her eyes fell as she began to ponder that question herself. “I… don’t know.”

He stiffened his posture. “You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I am not _Skye_ ,” she repeated, giving him a stern glare. Just because he was older than Skye and therefore her physical body, that didn’t mean she was the slightest bit scared of him—in fact, it should be the other way around. “How would I know where the rest of them are? All I know is that I woke up here, right around that corner we passed through earlier, with absolutely no recollection of the past few months since our time with the Foundation.”

He seemed to be processing her words in his mind for a brief moment, then sighed. “Right. I forgot. You went under when they started frying your brain, huh?”

She swallowed hard. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, for her and for Skye as well, she could bet. It left a bad taste in her mouth whenever someone mentioned anything about the SCP since then, and it was even worse knowing that Skye was now involved in some ‘case’ with them, too.

Huh. The Foundation. Foolish humans—‘scientists’ and humanity’s ‘protector’ as they considered themselves. It was foolish of them to think they could contain every single anomaly present in this world alone—in fact, it was suicidal, and it was one of the things she hated about humans. But it was one thing to willingly volunteer themselves for the sake of keeping the majority of humanity away from such anomalous entities and events, and it was another to risk the lives of ‘expendable’ others to do the exact same tasks.

Before she could say anything, however, she felt a hand latch onto her wrist, and she looked up just in time to see Tim yanking her around a sharp corner, into a shadowed alleyway just as abandoned as the rest of the streets, if not more. It was narrow, surrounded by the brick walls of the buildings beside it, with an empty dumpster and a plastic bag tumbling across the ground in the mercy of the wind.

Behind them, she could hear the faint echo of the laughter of a psychopathic maniac.

“C’mon, our hideout’s this way,” Tim said, some determination returning to his voice. “We’ll meet with the others first. Then we’ll find the others and a way out of here, all right?”

She nodded in agreement. She wasn’t in a position to protest anyway, and even though she was not human, some part of her began to think about the others, namely Toby and Jack. A sickening feeling began to form at the pit of the stomach belonging to this body she inhabited—a feeling she never felt before during her time as a mindless slave, one that she began to experience ever since she got her first taste of freedom.

Worry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is the last complete chapter I have on queue for this story. I don't know when I'll continue writing this fanfic in particular again, because honest to God I have no idea how to continue the story just yet. Though, to be fair, each time I've said something like that in the past, I found some way to continue the narrative again, so fingers crossed, I suppose?
> 
> But let me know what you guys think: should I continue with our detective's story (the case is yet to be solved, you know, and they're made to be like EJ and JTK's M.O.s for a reason) or should I switch perspectives? If it's the former, I'll still split chapters into two (half Bishop's POV, half Siren's POV). If it's the latter, then who's perspective are you interested in reading from?
> 
> But, uh, yeah, just let me know in the comments below; I appreciate every single one of them and all the kudos (it's like Christmas presents to me every single time I see one; granted, I've never experienced Christmas before so I guess I'll never know what that actually feels like).
> 
> And as always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great day!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bishop takes a trip down someone else's memory lane. Meanwhile, Siren and Tim have some convincing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know anymore. I haven't abandoned this story; then again, I haven't written anything for the past two months now.  
> So, apologies if this chapter ends up really weird, I acknowledge the fact that it's very absurd and maybe there are mistakes here and there, but fuck it, I'm running out of ideas.  
> And I don't know how long will it be until the next update. Sorry, again, if it doesn't meet expectations--if I don't meet expectations.

As absurd as it seemed, I found myself back in the farmhouse again for the second time since I’ve worked on this case.

It was desolate now. Uninhabited. Abandoned. Not much of a surprise, since two out of the four former residents here were lost in the middle of some astral, otherworldly space somewhere, one went out to get them, and the last one had been pronounced dead for a while now. It was impossible to ignore the air of despair hanging around the silence that surrounded the entirety of the old, rickety building, and it wouldn’t come as a shock if the house itself would collapse with all the thick layers of dust that cloaked every single interior surface while they were still out there, leaving this place to rot into pathetic piles of wood.

Regardless, the moment I threw the door open and left it that way to allow some fresh air to circulate in and out the humid interior, I immediately went over to the couch and took a seat, not even giving a damn about the dust now clinging to the fabric of my trousers, and before I knew it, I was staring at those photographs again.

I knew their names now. I recognized each and every one of them. I knew the truths behind them, the secrets they hid from us and the rest of society. Well, at least, I was aware of _some_ part of them.

I couldn’t resist wondering if they ever did consider each other as family, though. They spoke fondly of each other, and even of Wright. Skye’s protectiveness over Toby as though he was her own little brother. Jack’s willingness to put himself in the crosshairs of the Foundation agents as well as blackmailing his allies and former friends in order to reunite the three of them with each other. Toby wanting nothing more than to assist his two older ‘siblings’ while having to overcome his own personal issues along the way. Tim Wright, rest in peace, having to put up with these three oddballs and having possibly lost his life for their sakes.

It was a story tragic enough that it might as well be a Shakespeare play. The only difference was that this was happening in real life, and there might not even be a conclusion to the story at all.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then peeled my eyelids open once more. With one last glance around the living area, I decided to stand up and headed for upstairs, an area that I didn’t quite take a good look at before, that first and last time I was here.

Much to my surprise, there were other framed photographs hung on the walls following up the stairs as well as on either side of the hallway immediately after, though these were taken far longer before, some even when they were still children. There was one with Skye and Toby in what I could assume were their middle school years, accompanied by a girl about the same age as Skye who bore long blonde hair tied to a ponytail and bright green eyes, standing behind the two of them with a hand over each of their shoulders, her grin wider than the two people I could recognize combined.

“Lyra Rogers,” I gasped under my breath, realizing who the girl was and what was her importance to them, and I couldn’t resist feeling a slight pang in my heart as I began to recall what was written in Toby’s file.

The bullying. The car accident. Reports from his psychiatrist. Their father’s murder.

Other pictures along the stairwell and hallway told the story for me, until the blonde girl was no longer there beside them, and the last of the series had the two of them with Jack. They were older then, perhaps in their high school years, maybe even not too long before all the paranormal activities occurred. Jack was in graduation robes, and Skye and Toby were on either side of him with wide smiles. For as far as I knew, that might’ve been the last time all three of them were happy together.

Then I entered one of the rooms. The first room to the left was where we found Toby for the first time; it was messy, with things cluttered all over the place, just as we left it the last time. There were two twin beds inside the room, with a bedside table in between, a large dresser opposite to them and a desk right beside the door. The sheets, however, were strewn all over the place, with open books and torn-out pages scattered all over the rugged floor. The lampshade had fallen off the metal pole on the bedside table, its bulb broken. There were black markings that almost blended in with the dark blue walls, some of them random phrases that could not make sense to me. On the far wall was a window, translucent curtains drawn, allowing some light to flood into the darkened room.

I took my time there. I made sure to tread lightly with all the clutter in the room, observing what I could from a distance all the while checking drawers on the desk and the bedside table for perhaps any useful items that might end up as evidence for my case. On the shelf above the desk was another framed photograph, one that broke my heart a second time that day—a young Skye with two unfamiliar adults standing beside her, warm smiles, warm hearts.

Her parents.

In the first drawer of the bedside table was a similar object of similar sentimental value; this time, there were four people in the photograph, with a much younger Toby in the center, his sister to his right and his mother to his left. Beside his sister was a figure of a man with a heavy build, but the top right corner of the photograph was torn off, that piece taking what should’ve been the man’s face with it.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who the man was, considering the boy killed him with his own two hands.

Then, just as I was about to set the photo back into where I found it, I noticed something else lying right beneath it, and without hesitation, I picked it up and brought it to my field of vision. What I saw made me widen my eyes in disbelief.

It was Toby’s, so the boy was there in the Polaroid picture, but it was recent—he was in the same garment he wore the last time we saw him, the scar running through the side of his face still stitched up, but he was grinning with smiling eyes, his arm around the shoulder of a girl—not Skye, but someone shorter than him, with long disheveled brown hair, wearing a white tank top underneath a green hooded fur jacket. She looked like another average teenage girl, but then again, nothing was normal with these guys.

Especially not when in place of her left green eye was a shining silver clock face.

It was disturbing, to say the least. It looked like the clock face had been jammed into her eye socket, the skin around it peeling back and mutilated, still bright red and it looked like there were remnants of dried blood around it. Not to mention the fact that her lips, much like Toby’s, bore stitches that extended out to either cheek, but they were less rough nor crude compared to the boy’s.

I didn’t recognize her—not a single bit. I thought, _Maybe I should ask Gilliam about her. He seems to know his fair share about these guys, right?_

I replaced the photographs in the drawer where they belonged, sparing just one last glance before moving on with my work.

The room next to theirs was much cleaner, with just a double bed, a dresser, a bookshelf and a desk—in fact, it was so neat that I doubted anyone had been living in it for a while now, but there were several personal belongings found inside that told me otherwise: a pair of old boots sat next to the door, a black leather jacket on top of the desk chair, but what attracted my attention the most was the set of medical instruments laid out on top of a bloodstained turquoise cloth, cleaned and sharpened but clearly used before.

The scalpel, I noticed, was missing.

Well, not too much of a surprise, of course. How could Jack be out there without his trademark scalpel?

Other than that, the rest of the room looked like it belonged to a nerdish college student’s, but just like the rest of the house, there were photographed memories to be found around the room. On his desk, just like Skye, was what I could assume was him with his own parents, then another had him with a group of other, _normal_ human friends, and a third one was a picture of just him and Skye. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had any pictures of the other Creeps with him, though I couldn’t exactly imagine a bunch of serial killers taking pictures for memories either.

Well, except Toby and whoever that girl was, that is.

The bathroom was just like any other bathroom, with a shower and counters and a sink and toilet—nothing too unusual, not even in the choice of toiletries. Whereas the last room had also been the most ordinary out of them all, bare just like a typical guest room, showing no signs of it being used at all—at least, not recently—and no signs of who it belonged to at all, save for just one framed photograph on top of the empty wooden dresser.

Timothy Wright, surrounded by who I recognized to be his friends, the rest of the _Marble Hornets_ crew: Jay Merrick, Alex Kralie, Brian Thomas, and a couple others whose faces I might’ve seen before in the entries, but couldn’t recall their names. In contrast to those entries up on YouTube, they all seemed so… happy. Arms around each other’s shoulders, a couple doing thumbs-up and peace signs, wide smiles and grins across all their faces—just like most other pictures found all throughout the house.

 _They were normal people once,_ I thought to myself, a bit of melancholy overwhelming my chest. How could I not—they had families. Childhoods, and happy ones, too, I bet. They could’ve lived a normal life, if fate hadn’t been so cruel to them.

If the Operator had never ruined their lives in the first place.

Just as I began to lose myself to my thoughts, however, I was suddenly brought out of my daze when all of a sudden, a loud crash was heard downstairs. It startled me, causing me to jump a little and instinctively reach for the gun holstered on my belt, stopping myself as I turned around and stared at the open doorway I came from.

More noises were heard downstairs. Loud grunts—they sounded human, thankfully enough, and I could identify distinctively one of them being male and the other female—before several more crashes followed, like furniture being thrown around in the living room.

Fearing the worst, I went ahead and grabbed my pistol anyway, cautiously making my way out the room and down the stairwell, back to the living room. The first thing I noticed was another human grunt—this time, the female one—and two long shadows cast by the still-open doorway. I bit down on my lip as I turned around the corner with slow steps, peeking around it at first to see the cause for those two shadows, and I widened my eyes as soon as I realized who it was.

Putting the gun back to my side, I breathed out a long sigh of relief.

“Jesus Christ, Gilliam,” I huffed out through gritted teeth. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The FBI agent didn’t reply immediately; instead, he moved aside, yanking along the person whose hands he had handcuffed firmly behind their back and bringing their face to give me a full view of the person themselves—or, rather, _her_ self.

“I caught this bitch right here sneaking into the house with a knife out,” he snapped, eyes boring down at the girl. “I saw your car outside, so of course I had to act before she even thinks about doing anything.”

The first thing I noticed of her was the wild mass of brown hair and her green upper attire. Then she looked up, eyes staring straight at me, sending chills down my spine as soon as I realized who she was.

For her left eye had been replaced with a reflective silver clock face.

“Where’s Toby?” the girl hissed at me like a stray cat splashed with water, her jaw clenched tight, murder evident in her one green eye and the corner of her lips curling back to form a scowl, stretching the stitches even wider and making it seem far more disturbing than it already was. “Where’s Skye? Where are they? What the hell did you do to them?”

“Gone,” Gilliam snapped back, then yanked the girl's cuffed wrists as he began to drag her out the front door. "And it's none of your business. But sure is fancy meeting you here, Ouellette. It looks like you've got some answering to do."

He pulled her back up to her feet then shoved her out the door, leaving me in the wake of shock of what the hell just transpired beneath the broken roof of this house.

"C'mon, Bishop!" came Gilliam's voice from afar, then I heard the sound of the car door slammed shut. "We're burning daylight."

I told him I was coming then began walking to the front door, but just as I took one step out the house, I couldn't resist looking back at the dust-covered furniture, a brief glance at the stairwell leading to the plethora of memories in the second floor, and I couldn't help but think back to the girl again.

The bleeding, peeling skin around the clock face where her eye should be. The stitches extending past her lips to her cheeks.

_They had normal lives once._

_They could have had normal lives still._

I watched as the extra vehicle pulled away from the driveway and to the street, waiting for me to enter mine and leave with him.

I wonder what story this new girl had to tell.

 

* * *

 

She was less than thrilled to see them there, even though Skye would.

Of course, it wasn’t like any of them recognized her, whether she was Skye or not. If anything, they looked like they were about to choke the life out of her the moment she stepped foot into their so-called ‘hideout.’

“I thought we were done taking in refugees, Tim,” one of them snapped to the only ally she had here so far, with a deadpan but shrill tone that sounded like a scratch record to her ears. He was tall—the tallest person in the room, in fact, to the point that standing on the tips of his toes would cause his head to burst through the ceiling—with short light brown hair and glasses, wearing a blue striped hoodie and dark jeans, holding a gun out in front of him. She remained unfazed, however, instead tilting her head to the side, narrowing her eyes at the gun.

She should be afraid of it. She was in a mortal body, after all— _Skye’s_ mortal body. If anything happened to it, she’d be fine. A little weak, but fine.

Skye, on the other hand…

She scanned around the room. There were two others in there as well, in the same dark, cramped room the door had opened into. The one in the far corner of the room was shorter, just a little taller than Tim was, his hair covered with a brown cap and a hooded jacket of a similar shade, with droopy but somewhat alert eyes, narrowed even more so as soon as the two newcomers entered the room, his hand reaching behind his back, perhaps to pull out a weapon from what she could assume.

The other stood near the door, just a few feet from where they were, standing up even before they entered, perhaps having just arrived himself; still standing at about the same height, with short brown hair and similar attire as the other two, except that his jacket was mustard yellow, and what seemed to be a black rag in one of his gloved hands. This one seemed more amused than surprised or annoyed, with a tilted eyebrow, eyeing her up and down, more observing than suspicious.

“Alex, calm down,” Tim said, coming to her defense, standing in between her and the taller one with the blue hoodie, and for the second time since the day she first met him, she felt grateful he was there beside her—beside _them_. “She’s a friend—she’s one of those kids I told you about.” Then he casted a sideways glance at her. “Well, sort of.”

Hearing this, the young man—Alex—narrowed his eyes even further, but she could see his shaking hands and the uncertainty across his face, until the one with the hat stood up and stepped forward, putting a hand on top of the gun and pushing it down.

“Alex,” he warned as well, glaring at his friend.

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” Alex retorted back, regardless of what his friends said. “And where the hell did you find her? How the fuck did she end up down here, with us? How can we know she’s not one of… _them?_ How can we know she’s not working for the Operator?”

“As if I would ever.”

Almost everyone in the room visibly flinched as soon as she began to speak, though it was more like a murmur, but it was loud enough for them to hear the slight reverb in her voice—the clear giveaway that told them she was not what she seemed to be.

Tim, sensing the rise in tension inside the small space that confined all five of them together, took another step towards his friend.

“Put the gun down, Alex,” he warned once again, his voice a little louder this time around. “She’s not here to hurt us, and she’s done working for the Operator. Right now, she’s just like the rest of us here—trapped, wanting nothing more than to get out of here and to get rid of the Operator, once and for all.”

“Oh god, again with that bullshit.” Alex kept on gazing back and forth between her and Tim, but for what it’s worth, the gun was still trained at her instead of his own friend. “Haven’t you had enough, Tim? Oh, and how do you plan on doing that, huh? As far as I know, all you’ve been doing was running away from your problems instead of facing them. I mean, that’s what I was trying to do, but you had to kill me, didn’t you?”

“Alex.”

“Alex, dude, come on. Not now.”

“If I am that unwelcome here, I would not mind leaving.”

She was louder now, her voice bouncing off the walls and echoing throughout the room, enough to cease the arguments and to bring heads turned towards her. They were like children, she thought. Understandable, given their current situation, but if they knew any better, arguing amongst themselves—victims, survivors—would get them nowhere. They were supposed to be fighting against a common enemy—the Operator—not themselves.

She had hoped they learnt a thing or two, having gone through it the hard way and ended up here. Turns out it wasn’t enough.

What worse fate did they need to be put in to start working towards their common goal?

“I can find a way out myself,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I am more than capable at defending myself against HABIT when he comes around—more than all of you, at least. And besides, unlike any of you, I am not dead. I can leave.”

“Sheesh,” the man a few feet beside her, the one with the mustard yellow hoodie, hissed through gritted teeth, but one corner of his lips was turned up. “Way to put it that way, miss. No need for a reminder of the fact that we’re _dead_.”

“Well, I’m not risking it.”

She was quite surprised to hear Tim’s voice being so disapproving to the idea she suggested, so she turned to the man with a curious look, her eyes meeting his stern ones.

“Don’t take this the wrong way; I still despise you,” he spoke with disdain, eyes glaring at her, standing at the same height level. Then, as she expected, his expression softened. “But you’re still in Skye’s body. And I’ll be damned if anything happens to that kid. Not just me; the boys will never hear the end of it if anything happens to you— _either_ of you. And besides, Skye’s been chucking those pills down even after I left, right? I doubt you’re in any condition to go head-to-head against the literal god of chaos himself.”

“Whoa, okay, hold on,” the man with the hat interrupted abruptly, putting a hand up and facing the two of them with knitted eyebrows. “Look, Tim, we admire the fact that you’re trying to help a bunch of kids finishing what we started and died for, but Alex is right—we have enough on our hands already with HABIT running around and Jeff’s gone off somewhere and hasn’t checked in with us yet—”

“Wait, again?”

“And I don’t like the tone of her voice—she sounds a little too much like HABIT, don’t you think?” the man finished, his shoulders falling, his eyebrows knitted together. “And don’t pretend to play dumb; you said she’s ‘done working for the Operator.’ Are you implying—”

Tim scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Well, take a wild guess, Jay.”

She averted her eyes away, making sure no one heard her sigh. _Skye would have been better at this. More than I will ever be._

It was Skye who convinced Tim to join their side. It was Skye who rallied her friends and had them all work towards a common goal. If it wasn’t for that pathetic human the body belonged to, Tim would still be in the hands of the Foundation, Jack would be out there somewhere being the animalistic monster he had been turned into, and Toby… The boy would still be stuck as another mindless puppet, not living but not dead either.

As pathetic and as vulnerable as Skye was with her all-too-human qualities, Siren envied her. _She was better at this than I will ever be._

Humans. They just had to be _so_ complicated.

“She used to work for him, right?” the man, Jay, huffed out with a shaking breath. “She’s one of them, isn’t she?”

He wasn’t pointing any fingers at her, but she saw that accusing glare from her peripheral vision. It came as no surprise to her—everyone had that initial reaction before, too, but how each person proceeded after being bestowed with what to her was such simple knowledge afterwards… That was the interesting part.

And one person here in this room alone had a loaded gun, barrel pointed straight at her temple.

“Not anymore.” She wanted to tell Tim that it was pointless. She admired his attempt to help, but the thing about humans was that they were all so persistent, even to the point of making fruitless attempts to strive for a hopeless cause. But again, he persisted. “She can be an ally—she _is_ an ally. Against the Operator, against HABIT.”

“And what reason she has to do so?”

“I know what the Operator is capable of.” She found her voice again—Skye’s soft, murmuring voice, distorted from her corruption, the haunting reverb as obvious as ever. “I may be nothing but a pawn, but… I have seen what he can do, and what he has done. I refuse to let it happen again.”

“And she’s not the only one,” Tim chimed in, and she wished he’d shut up, but it was too late now. “There are others out there—others who defected. Others who will.”

 _Such an optimist,_ she wanted to sneer, but held herself back because as much as she hated to admit it, she wished she could have such a positive thought of her own. Sure, Firebrand had been the first to defect, and from what she heard from him, there were others whose connections to their master were beginning to waver, like loosening strings. It was _his_ host’s doing, of course—again, another one of them helpless in situations like these if it weren’t for their host—and his connections with _their_ hosts as well.

She wondered how many were out there now. How many more lives her former master had ruined, how many more innocents roped into the clutches of the Collective since her absence. The severed connection prevented her from sharing such information with the Collective, and it did put her at a disadvantage, but the additional shred of freedom she gained from it was a decent trade.

“Jack and Toby have their friends, too…”

Ah, of course. Their ‘friends’, per se—the Creeps, as they liked to call themselves. Self-explanatory enough. In other words, others like them, with similar broken minds, broken souls and broken faces. Creatures, monsters shunned from the rest of the world, finding solace in the makeshift broken community they formed for their own. Searching through Skye’s memories now, it seemed that there have been new members joining such a community as well. Perhaps someday, they might even overwhelm the Collective as well, in terms of their numbers.

In terms of power, however, was another story to tell. Then again, even she didn’t know how some of those creatures, those monsters could come to be in the first place. Perhaps there are some things that are best left unexplained.

If push had to come to shove, they might prove useful to aid their cause. It was a high risk maneuver, but it was a risk she was willing to take, if it meant it would take the Collective down with her.

“And how do you know they’re going to help us?”

She turned to Tim, eyes locking with his, repeating the same but unspoken question through her gaze. He breathed out a sigh.

“We can hope,” he said. She held back a snicker. “And trust that they will. The boys want the Operator gone as much as we do.” He threw a quick glance at her direction, but she knew he wasn’t looking at her—he was looking at Skye. “And if the Operator wins, or HABIT somehow fucks this up and starts to handle matters with his own hands, then there would be nothing for us—and nothing for _them_ —to come back to. They may be broken, but they have families. Friends. Lovers. People they care about. I think that’s enough to give them a reason why this is a cause worth fighting for.”

“And what are we fighting for?” Alex was choking back his laughter now, but those exasperated sighs just sounded lifeless. Desperate. Grasping onto straws. “Like, for fuck’s sake, what are we even doing here? _Why_ are we still here? Don’t you ever ask that, every single fucking second we spend here? Honestly, what happens if HABIT does get to us? What fate is worse than this?”

There was silence. Jay and their other friend in the hoodie glanced back and forth between each other, Alex was shaking, and Tim was emotionless. It almost concerned her for a short moment.

“Don’t you have family up there in the surface, Alex? People you left behind? Parents, siblings, other friends… Jessica? Amy?”

This appeared to have struck a nerve in not just Alex, but the rest of the others as well. Jay visibly flinched, Brian’s collected composure dropped as his eyes wandered away from any of them, and Alex had stopped shaking.

“They’re all still out there,” Tim continued with a frown. “I know you lied about Amy, just like how I lied to you about Jessica. They’re both alive and well, but because of what we did—what _you_ did—they’re already in too deep in this mess. But we can still get them out, can’t we? Spare them from being stranded in the middle of nowhere like this?”

“And us?” Alex sounded like he was on the verge of tears, a reaction she knew all too well, having witnessed such a scene unfold before her too many times. “What awaits us?”

Tim shrugged. “A better ending. I mean, maybe. I don’t even know. But would you rather stay down here in this hellhole? There might be something else out there. HABIT taunted us many times before: we’re _trapped_ down here. We’re prisoners— _his_ prisoners, and the Operator’s, too. There _has_ to be something else out there. There _has_ to be a way out of here.”

A way out. That was what she needed. A way out.

But does such a thing exist? She had no power here, in either of their domains. She was just as helpless as these lost souls were, but not as optimistic. Nowhere near as optimistic as Tim, and that was a rare sight to see, knowing his usual sarcastic, solemn self under normal situations. Maybe things have changed.

“And if we can, we’ll stop all of this for good. Just like you wanted, right? We’ll find a way—we all will. It might be impossible, but we can try, right?”

Fighting against the unknown. How foolish of them.

How brave of them.

After a period of time, she noticed Alex’s hand moving, slowly descending back to his side and holstered the gun. He nodded at her.

“A way out of here, right?” he repeated with a heavy sigh. “Then first thing’s first, we find the one person who knows this place a lot better than we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's over a YEAR since EMH has updated, Noah's birthday has passed and nothing much happened except Noah complaining on Twitter, I'm not following Eckva anymore because I just don't have a single goddamn clue about what's going on, and I am slowly becoming a stereotypical seventeen-year-old teenage girl.  
> In other words, I'm dying. Send help. Please.


End file.
